


world tours & missed connections

by flybbfly



Series: Homesick at Band Camp (Wish You Were Here) [2]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Bandslash, Emo, Long-Distance Relationship, Long-Term Relationship(s), Lots of drug use, M/M, Phone Sex, Touring, also some correct psychology, incorrect psychology, party central
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:37:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 72,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6031741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras wants to change the world. Grantaire wants to make good music (and wants Enjolras to think he's making good music). Luckily, they're both in wildly popular bands, so their dreams might actually come true.</p><p>Long term relationship fic featuring long distance relationship(s!), phone sex, screenshots of fake Vanity Fair articles, and gratuitous bandslash references. </p><p>Probably won't make sense if you haven't read <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5197547/chapters/11978090">selling out (madison square garden)</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. south america

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I rewrote this like six times because I couldn't figure out how or where or when to start it, so if you hate it, just tell me so I have some justification for also not liking it. (just kidding please be nice to me). 
> 
> Warnings: mental illness (anxiety, depression) & its appropriate treatment. Use of MDMA, cocaine, marijuana, cigarettes, and alcohol with very little discussion of the negative repercussions of any. Shaky knowledge of music venues in major European and South American cities. Shameless self-indulgence, including about a thousand Panic! At the Disco references.

_ all was golden in the sky _

*

It's hot, joke-about-cooking-eggs-on-the-sidewalk hot, and their bus's air conditioning is broken. Enjolras crosses his legs on his bunk and closes his eyes, forcing himself to do the steady breathing his therapist has told him to practice: inhale, count to five. Hold it, count to seven. Exhale, count to eight.

Against his thigh, Enjolras's phone vibrates. He forces himself not to look at it. Inhale-three-four, hold it-three-four-five-six-seven, exhale-three-four-five-six-seven-eight—it vibrates again. 

“It's so fucking _hot_ ,” Bahorel announces, jumping down from his own top bunk and landing with a thud opposite Enjolras. “Want to go see a movie?”

“I'm trying therapeutic breathing,” Enjolras says, cracking one eye open.

“Is that, like, cognitive behavioral therapy stuff? Is it working?”

“Actually, kind of,” Enjolras admits. “What movie?”

“I don't care. Anything's better than this.”

“When's the mechanic coming?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Fuck.”

“Exactly.” Bahorel puts a joint in his mouth and lights it with his personalized Sank Amy Zippo, a gift from a fan at a Chicago meet and greet. “That's why we should go to the movies.”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says. “Okay.”

“How's your Spanish?”

“Passable,” Enjolras says. “Like—several years in high school? My French is better though.”

“Unfortunately for you, French isn't the language you'll need to know to understand what's going on in the movie.” Bahorel offers Enjolras the joint—he always does—and does another hit when Enjolras shakes his head. “Feuilly's coming too.”

“Have the Sardonic Colons gotten here yet?” Enjolras asks, hoping he sounds casual.

“I don't know. Sight-seeing. Team bonding activities. Cosette-ordered. Why? You want to add your new best friend Grantaire to the mix?” 

Bahorel is giving him a knowing smile, but Enjolras is pretty sure Bahorel knows jack shit, and he sort of wants it to stay that way, private and sweet and just between him and Grantaire for as long as possible. 

“Not that I mind,” Bahorel says. Another hit. Enjolras has always loved watching people smoke, even if he doesn't do it himself. The way the end burns up, the ember, the smell, the ashes—he doesn't like making symbols of everything (a cigar occasionally being—he's told—just a cigar), but he loves the idea of the status quo as cigarette, burned up and murderous. “Grantaire always has the best drugs.”

“I'm pretty sure like half his paycheck goes to high quality cocaine.”

“Well, we're in the right place for it,” Bahorel says. “Or are we? Can you even _get_ coke in Colombia, or is it strictly an export?”

“I'm really not the right person to ask.” 

“I'll text Grantaire, I guess.” Bahorel blows out smoke. “So. We going?”

“Yeah, let me put on a shirt,” Enjolras says.

His phone vibrates again. A second text, again from Grantaire: _cosettes making us sightsee without 5 amy. see u after the show?_ and then, _just walked past sushi-andean fusion thats open til four. jbm might tag along but they'll inevitably sneak out 2 make out & then……we can do the same?_

Laughing to himself, Enjolras replies his assent, shoves his phone in his pocket, and tugs on a t-shirt. When he looks up, Bahorel is frowning at him.

“Creepy,” Enjolras says.

“Why are you smiling at your phone?”

“Funny tweet,” he says. “Let's go.”

Bahorel still looks skeptical, but Enjolras walks past him and off the bus.

*

They're in Colombia because, with Sardonic Colon's support, Enjolras won the “should we or shouldn't we go to South America” fight. They got two weeks off, during which Sardonic Colon flew to L.A. and then New York to shoot a video for Blue Moon and Sank Amy flew to Chicago to record some of the tracks for their next album—and so that Combeferre could get his insisted-upon vacation.

“I know it's necessary,” Enjolras told Grantaire when they were all at Dallas/Forth Worth waiting in line to check their luggage. “I _know_. And I want my friends to rest up and spend some time relaxing and recovering. But I'm just so impatient. I'm worried that if we wait too long we'll miss the boat and the world will move on without us and it'll all have been a waste—One Direction put out an album a year, did you know that? Can you imagine?”

“I get it,” Grantaire said. He was like a radiator, body heat coming off him in droves despite the airport's overzealous air conditioning. Enjolras, who was freezing in only a thin hoodie, huddled closer. “It's the Kurt Cobain thing, better to burn out than fade away. But Kurt Cobain died, Enjolras. Take a break. You need one too.”

“I know,” Enjolras said. “I rented an apartment in downtown Chicago. It's supposed to be beautiful.” He bumped his shoulder against Grantaire's, and then took advantage of being at the back of the line to briefly squeeze Grantaire's hand. “I wish you were coming,” he whispered, suddenly self-conscious.

“That's sweet,” Grantaire said. He sounded detached, but he had that smile on his face he gets every so often, almost like a child's on Christmas morning. Enjolras couldn't help but be—well—helplessly charmed by it.

“I mean it,” he said. “It's going to be so weird not seeing you for so long.”

“It's only two weeks,” Grantaire reminded him, the fingers Enjolras had previously held now drumming relentlessly against his thigh. “We'll Skype every day.”

“You're looking forward to this.” The realization sat heavily in Enjolras's stomach, 

“I can't pretend I love being on tour,” Grantaire said. “I mean—the good parts, yeah, definitely, I love the people, I love the shows—but the endless bus rides, the smell … I love my band, but I miss New York, and I'm going to be happy to have my own space. Aren't you?”

“When you put it like that,” Enjolras said. “I was only thinking about—I know we're going to be taking it easy, only recording one or two tracks, doing some writing. I was thinking about it as a waste of time.”

“Have you ever heard that phrase 'don't set yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm'?”

“What if it keeps _everybody_ else warm?”

Grantaire looked at him and opened his mouth like he was going to say something—but then it was their turn to check their luggage, and Grantaire didn't say anything else.

*

It's been two weeks since Grantaire has seen Enjolras, two weeks during which Grantaire has spent a lot of time in L.A. on the beach to shoot their video, Joly insisting all of them wear sunscreen while Grantaire smoked what might have been his hundredth cigarette since landing at LAX, Joly making them all take Emergen-C before they get to New York, lecturing them as always on the right way to sneeze, “It's flu season, guys, and none of us are vaccinated,” but the prospect of being in New York again makes Grantaire giddy and he just does whatever Joly tells him to. Emergen-C and scarves, heattech thermals, flash drives with backups of the video footage in all of their bags even though a version was sent via email to their video editor.

L.A. goes hard in a different way from New York, coke and vodka and house parties instead of molly and tequila and clubs, and Grantaire spent the entire time either dizzy and drunk or Skyping with Enjolras in his bedroom in the beach house Sardonic Colon rented. New York was the same in that way, alcohol and drugs and being stretched out in the Bushwick studio he still hasn't upgraded despite Cosette's insistence on something approaching a security detail (“Well, at least get some fucking alarms installed,” she told him, and when he got home his landlord gave him an earful about that, and about the subletter who'd been there the entire six months of tour, and about playing music there, too, but being back in New York, very little of it mattered).

But he's watching Enjolras now at the first show of their South American tour in Bogotá, and Grantaire hasn't played for a crowd since the Texas leg of their North American tour, and somehow he managed to forget that Enjolras gets like this, like Christ sprouting a thousand fish in front of awed fans instead of just four fishermen. If Christ had that mean edge, the curl of Enjolras's lip, the way he spreads his arms wide to clap (the imagery, Grantaire thinks, is a little heavy-handed), the _anger_. 

Grantaire rubs at his numb gums. It's astoundingly easy to get coke here, a simple matter of asking a cab driver and then showing up to buy it with Sardonic Colon's new bodyguard. But the meeting place is the bar at a resort anyway, and Grantaire only has exactly enough cash to buy an eight ball (he limits himself still, an eight ball a week maximum, one or two lines before each show if absolutely necessary) and some weed. It's easy in the States, of course, when you're in Grantaire's current situation, but here it's like a joke, like buying weed at a suburban high school. And it's good coke, too, uncut, fresh, Grantaire still feeling the effects of it well after the show has ended.

They get dinner after their set, and it's more than Grantaire bargained for, the entirety of Sank Amy and Sardonic Colon piling into Ubers to go to a Japanese fusion place Grantaire spotted earlier. It's distracting how long it's been since he's seen Enjolras, and Grantaire feels on edge the whole car ride over, chewing the inside of his cheek like he doesn't have assurance of Enjolras's affection for him in a text message from earlier that day.

“Don't worry,” Joly says, reaching over to squeeze Grantaire's wrist and then passing him a joint. “Bogotá's totally safe, dude.”

It's not, Grantaire wants to argue, it's not and he doesn't really care anyway, but he doesn't say anything because to tell the truth would be to draw attention to something he's pretty sure Enjolras wants to keep under wraps. 

“Thanks,” Grantaire says on the exhale instead, cracking a window to let some of the smoke out. The Uber driver meets his eye in the rearview mirror, but doesn't say anything, and Grantaire drops all the cash he has in his wallet—USD—in the passenger seat on his way out.

“Dude, you don't have to tip an Uber driver,” Bossuet says.

“I know that.”

“So you were just being super generous?”

“I just felt bad that we made his car smell like shit.”

“Dude, money is worth way more here. You just paid for like eight Uber rides.”

“Then he can take the night off,” Grantaire says, irritated. “Jesus.”

“I'm not telling you it was a bad thing,” Bossuet says. “Just—I just wanted to know why.”

The reason why is that Grantaire is an anxious mess despite the drugs, and he's annoyed at this weird new rockstar status, at the bodyguard sitting in the passenger seat, at the amount of money in his bank account, at Cosette needling him to get a financial advisor, at everything. 

“I just had it on me leftover from when I bought the stuff,” Grantaire says, even though he pulled it from an ATM after that. The bodyguard looks at him, slightly skeptical, but doesn't say anything. The label pays for his silence as well as his protection, and Grantaire is at least grateful for the former.

The thing is, Grantaire thinks, walking into the restaurant and thanking Cosette or whoever arranged this that the place hasn't been cleared out for them, the thing is that they're so _big_ now. It's weird to blow up, like some fucked up form of wish fulfillment where Grantaire feels torn between happiness and self-betrayal, if that's even a thing. Their first album was a well-received niche record, and since they opened in front of metal bands and played punk bars, it got pretty significant traction in the less snobby parts of those circles. College kids who'd been into pop punk in high school loved it. Adults who'd been into emo in high school felt it. Teenagers who'd missed both emo and its angrier resurrection circa '05 thought it was wonderful that someone, finally, understood them—and did it in a way that was catchy and funny without trying too hard.

But their second album, _I Namedropped You in My Suicide Note_ —it blows up. It gets radio airtime, and a lot, and on Top 40 stations and not just indie or alt rock stations. The video for “It's a Hurricane and I Can't Sleep (Summer of Hate)” gets played a few million times on Vevo. The video for “Blue Moon” is coming out in a week, and Grantaire's twitter account has been insane ever since they posted label-approved Instas of themselves on the beach with video cameras, fans asking what the subject matter will be, what the next video will be, when they're coming out with new music, who the extras are, why Sank Amy aren't in the video with them. They're mainstream—not Taylor Swift mainstream, not even Fall Out Boy mainstream, more like Hozier mainstream. People start talking about VMAs and Grammys and People's Choice Awards. Bossuet starts fucking with a synth. The president of Stars calls Musichetta and tells her he's happy for them and intends to have them headline a European tour next. Cosette got them a bodyguard like Sank Amy's, a tall, hulking figure who rarely follows any of them anywhere unless they ask. 

“How does it feel to be a sell out?” Courfeyrac asks Grantaire when Sank Amy walk into the restaurant.

Grantaire isn't sure, exactly, so he just shrugs. “I'll call you when we get a Monday Night Football deal and let you know.”

Courfeyrac, whose band's most recent single was used in a Coca-Cola ad campaign (which prompted Enjolras to complain about Stars and capitalism for several hours over Skype—“Grantaire, they steal people's _water_!”), has the grace to look ashamed.

It's not that Grantaire doesn't like having a lot of people listen to his music. He _does_ —it's what he's always wanted and he's come to terms with it, with the idea that a lot of people liking his music doesn't mean his music is lowest common denominator. But it's this new status, like he's a _celebrity_ , that has him constantly grinding his teeth even if Sank Amy deal with way more than he does.

“Grantaire?” 

Grantaire resists the urge to whirl around. Instead he turns slowly, forcing himself not to smile too widely, and says, “Hey, Enjolras. How's your break been?”

Enjolras looks stricken. He runs a hand through his hair, gives Grantaire an odd half-smile. “It was alright. We recorded a ton of stuff for the next album.”

“Is it your usual bubblegum Rage Against the Machine, or is it actually good this time?”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “How was _your_ break?”

“You'll find out when you see the 'Blue Moon' video.”

“Is that not just a beer commercial?”

Grantaire raises an eyebrow. “I didn't know you knew beer brands.”

“There's a lot you don't know about me.”

“Ugh,” says Eponine. “Watching you two flirt is still so gross. Go sit at the end of the table so none of us have to deal with your will-they-or-won't-they bullshit.”

Enjolras actually laughs at this, and Grantaire has the urge to laugh, too, sitting down next to him and barely listening when Bahorel and Eponine translate the menu for them. He orders the chef's special because it seems like the smartest choice, and Enjolras brushes his knee under the table, and it's the first physical contact they've shared since they squeezed each other's hands in farewell at Dallas-Fort Worth, and Grantaire has trouble not grinning like an idiot.

*

Cosette steps in when their bus still doesn't get repaired, convincing Stars that they deserve to fly and spend nights in hotels for this tour. “Otherwise you'd be driving, like, eighteen hours some nights,” she tells Sank Amy over speakerphone. “It doesn't make any sense.”

“So the broken AC is a blessing in disguise,” Bahorel says, grinning.

“That's a poor cliché,” Jehan says. “Cosette, have you already bought plane tickets for us?”

“For you, Sardonic Colon, and your roadies,” Cosette says. “Or I guess they're air-ies now.”

There's a brief silence, and then Marius starts to laugh.

“Nice save,” Cosette says. “Good luck tonight. Give Sardonic Colon my love.” 

She hangs up, leaving Enjolras's band half-grinning at each other.

“Excellent,” Bahorel says. “Imagine the time we'll save.”

“You mean we'll actually get to see the continent we're touring?” Feuilly says, running a hand through dark hair. “Airports and all?”

“Fuck, imagine the amount of time we're about to spend in security lines at airports,” Combeferre says. 

“Taking our shoes off and getting patted down?” Courfeyrac says. “Sounds like my idea of a good time.”

“I can't wait,” Feuilly says dryly. 

“Maybe we can do the VIP thing,” Marius says. 

“Yeah, they'll give me that in a heartbeat,” Courfeyrac says. “Who wants a drink?”

Nearly every hand goes up.

*

Combeferre looks completely startled when Enjolras offers him and Eponine his private room.

“Really?”

“I mean, I don't think it's absurd that you would want to spend the night with your girlfriend in a single, especially since we're going to be separated for a while after this tour.”

“You _hate_ sharing rooms,” Combeferre says. “You requested a new roommate the second week of our freshman year. You literally have a doctor's note that precludes you from shared rooms while on tour.”

“Right, which is why there's one nice single room in every hotel we visit that's just for me. I'm offering it to you. That way you and Courfeyrac don't have to switch off sex nights.”

Combeferre stares at him. “You know this means you'd be sharing a room with _Grantaire_ , right?”

“Talking about me?” Grantaire says, showing up right on cue and swinging an arm around Combeferre's shoulders to offer him a joint. Combeferre accepts, but looks at Grantaire, still nonplussed.

“You've agreed to this?” Combeferre says.

“Agreed to what?”

“You and Enjolras sharing a room so Eponine and I can take his room.”

“Oh, yeah,” Grantaire says. “Really, it saves me from all the PDA.” An exhalation of smoke, a flash of his smile at Enjolras, a wink Combeferre can't see from his angle. 

“Well—thank you, then,” Combeferre says. “But I mean, if you two hate it and decide you want to kill each other after all, let me know.”

“Of course,” Grantaire says, plucking his joint neatly from between Combeferre's fingertips and doing a hit before offering it to Enjolras, who turns it down. “I heard Enjolras once had to switch roommates because his wasn't cleaning out the lint traps in their floor dryer, is that true?”

“Yes,” Combeferre says. “Did you hear who the roommate was?”

“No.”

“It was me.”

“Miracle you two are still friends, then,” Grantaire says.

“It's less a miracle and more cynical political calculation,” Enjolras says.

Combeferre and Grantaire both stare at him, and then Grantaire starts to laugh.

“You're funny,” Combeferre says. “Since when are you funny?”

“I've always been funny.”

“Not self-aware funny.”

“I have my moments.” Enjolras gives him his audience smile, big and dangerous, and Combeferre actually rolls his eyes before smiling back.

*

Grantaire has heard of honeymoon periods in relationships before, but he's never really experienced it until now. All his relationships have been sexually off-kilter and emotionally intense, their lifespans often shorter than the time it took for the sexual tension to build up in the first place.

With Enjolras, it's different, at least partially because they're trying to keep this all under wraps. Neither of them have told anyone in their bands yet, and while it seemed sort of like they knew when they were finishing up North America, now it's more like—like Eponine said. Like both bands are just waiting for them to either hook up or kill each other. 

But Enjolras and Grantaire haven't talked about it. They haven't called it a relationship, haven't mentioned it to anyone, haven't discussed not mentioning it to anyone—for now, it's just them hanging out, sharing dimly-lit drinks (tea for Enjolras; wine for Grantaire) long after their bandmates have gone to sleep and taking advantage of their hotel room, waking up next to each other as sunlight streams in through the vertical blinds, Enjolras smiling faintly and curling his fingers in Grantaire's hair.

“Good morning,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire feels the bottom drop out of his stomach.

*

Enjolras is an obsessive by nature, so it makes sense that he would obsess over this too. He isn't surprised by it, and he tries not to be clingy—it's more that he's always trying to get a grasp on everything, sitting down at a table across from Grantaire and asking over twin plates of ceviche, “What exactly is it that makes you like me? A relationship—I mean, like, two people can't thrive on passion alone.”

And Grantaire stares at him, bewildered, like he's never considered this. “Uh—you're hot and I like arguing with you?”

“That's it?” Enjolras says, insides going cold. He stares down at his acid-soaked shrimp. “It's not, like, my personality?”

“Of course it's your personality.” Grantaire tilts Enjolras's chin up with two fingers, the suggestion of a kiss even though there's an entire table and this whole weird semi-closeted thing keeping them apart. It's a gesture Enjolras is fairly certain Grantaire adopted from him. He thinks, irritably, that it's hotter when Grantaire does it, even if Grantaire is shorter than him. “But I thought you wanted me to list things other than passion.”

“I just meant—like, passion between us. Wanting to fuck each other isn't good fuel for a relationship.”

“Okay, well, you're passionate, and I think that's hot,” Grantaire says. As usual, he looks like he's vibrating every time he tries to sit still. Enjolras isn't sure Grantaire even notices how constantly and relentlessly he fidgets. It is particularly annoying (or, Enjolras thinks despite himself, endearing) in bed when they're trying to sleep. “I don't know. You inspire me. You're—you really want me to just list the reasons? Like, is this doing it for you?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says. “I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, obviously, but I'd like to hear why, because Eponine says I'm always a dick to you and I want to make sure I'm not just another one of your self-destructive tendencies.”

“Of course you are,” Grantaire says. “I mean, not _just_ that, but definitely partially. Like—if I weren't self-destructive, I probably wouldn't go for the unattainable demigod out to literally start a revolution, you know? I'd go for something easier. A friendly blonde instead of a mean one.”

“I'm not mean.”

“You just said you're always a dick to me.”

“Well, I've been trying,” Enjolras says. “Is it working?”

Grantaire laughs. “Yes. Thank you for being nice to me.”

“I'm sorry for being a dick.”

“You're not a dick,” Grantaire says, and then, when Enjolras looks at him skeptically, laughs. “Okay, fine, you are, kind of. I just think that sometimes your excitement for stuff gets in the way of your manners.”

“I just don't care about manners,” Enjolras says. “They're so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things—like, I wouldn't ask a Wall Street exec to please give me all his money, I'd just steal from the rich and give to the poor, you know?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says. He still looks amused, half-smile, knee bumping against Enjolras's under the table even though they're still trying to be incognito. “I was just trying not to call you a dick.”

“That's very generous.”

“And only partially untrue.” 

It's lovely when Grantaire is grinning like this, that surprised but pleased look he always has now, a touch of helplessness about it, and it's so lovely that Enjolras has to stop eating and just stare for a second. He'd give anything right now to reach for Grantaire's hand, but none of this is clear and Enjolras doesn't know what he's doing or if Grantaire even wants it to be a thing and not just a _thing_ , and suddenly he feels just as helpless as Grantaire looks.

There's the flash nearby of someone taking a picture, and Grantaire's jaw tenses momentarily, and then they return to eating, this time in silence except for the sound of Grantaire's toe tapping persistently against the floor.

*

It's odd how tightly-knit they've all become, Enjolras thinks, though it's been nearly a year of touring together so he supposes it makes sense. But they've toured with smaller acts before, pop starlets with their own brands of rabid fans, boy bands pretending they're punk, once—for a month and a half the summer after they first went platinum, when the Stars CEO was in a particularly good mood—with a famous Bollywood performer.

Enjolras is okay with people. He really is. He's good at talking, and people usually listen to him, and that's all he really needs. So he's acquaintances with all the people they've toured with before, has a few of their numbers in his phone, feels relatively confident that if he called them for a collab or if he asked them to tweet something, they'd do it. Courfeyrac is much better with people, gets to know pretty much everyone they meet really well, and has his own steadily-growing group of celebrities and musical acts who will gladly help spread whatever message he wants. They retweet him when he posts about new Sank Amy stuff, like his instagram posts, comment, feel—Enjolras is sure—specially privileged when Courfeyrac responds. Courfeyrac has that effect on people.

But the point is that they've never become _friendly_ with people the way they have with Sardonic Colon. Enjolras supposes it helps that they already knew Eponine from her summer filling in for Feuilly, that Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta got along so well with Bahorel and Courfeyrac, that Grantaire gets along with everybody except, initially, Enjolras.

“What are you thinking about?” Grantaire says now, breaking into Enjolras's reverie.

“Just—everything. Like—how we all came to be.”

“Not, like, Genesis or whatever?” Crooked smile. 

“No, I meant, like, how our bands ended up friends and not just—you know how it is. You tour, then you're done with tour, you never see them again.”

“Except for parties in L.A. when you do coke in V.I.P. area of a nightclub together and promise you'll hang out, yeah,” Grantaire says.

“Enjolras doesn't know about that part,” Courfeyrac says cheerfully from beside Grantaire. “When was the last time you were at a party that Sardonic Colon weren't invited to, Enjolras?”

“Freshman year of college,” Jehan cuts in. “Remember? He had a sip of Svedka and started talking about how disgusted Marx would be at the state of Cornell.”

“—'even after all that affirmative action, still it remains clear that action has only affirmed what we all knew: the Ivy League is a hotbed of elites masquerading as a progressive set of institutions in order to better their endowments and thus even further pad their pockets',” Combeferre quotes. “I remember that. The girl he was talking to looked like she was going to throw up on his shoes.”

“Et tu?” Enjolras says, and Combeferre doesn't even look apologetic, sipping from his glass of red wine.

That's the other thing about touring South America: group dinners with flowing wine that's as amazing as it is dirt cheap. Even Enjolras, who doesn't much like drinking, has a glass most nights. Grantaire's been trying to figure out how much he can smuggle home since they landed, and he's actually a little annoyed that they're flying back out of Rio and not Santiago. 

“As if you weren't one of those elites,” Grantaire says now, rolling his eyes. “Tell me: did you get aid to study at one of the most expensive schools in the country, or was that all paid for by your parents?”

“Oh, come on,” Enjolras says, setting down his fork and knife. “You know that's not fair. I've done everything I can to be an ally to—”

“—the proletariat?” Grantaire asks, grinning and finishing his glass of wine. 

“He's just teasing you, Enjolras,” Musichetta says, Courfeyrac reaching out to refill both her glass and Grantaire's. “How have you not learned by now that you literally have to ignore ninety percent of the shit that comes out of Grantaire's mouth?”

“Give me at least eighty-five,” Grantaire says, but his eyes don't leave Enjolras. “Sometimes I say valuable stuff.”

“So you're just antagonizing me for no reason.”

“I mean, I wouldn't say _no_ reason.” Grantaire's foot bumps against Enjolras's ankle under the table. It shouldn't be calming, but it sort of is. “I do think it's a little ridiculous to complain about the institution when you're the one benefiting from what you're complaining about. If you didn't want more elites at Cornell, you shouldn't have gone.”

“But who's to say they wouldn't have just filled my spot with another white kid with rich parents?” Enjolras says. “That's what I mean. Discrete victories aren't enough. The whole system has to change.”

“All at once? You gonna Noah's ark the whole world?”

Enjolras sips at his wine, frustrated, but he knows this is just how Grantaire works: falsely irreverent, pervasively cynical, Grantaire takes coaxing, his true beliefs hidden beneath several layers of skepticism and antagonistic needling. He's quiet about his passions, and now he watches Enjolras, expectant.

“That isn't possible,” Enjolras says.

“As much as you wish it was?”

“I don't think the wrath of a merciless God is exactly what we're looking for here,” Enjolras says. “It's the opposite.”

Everyone else has gotten bored with their conversation, moved on to other topics, but Grantaire is still here, leaning back in his chair, cradling yet another glass of wine. His plate is half-eaten, but he looks patently uninterested in any more food, instead tapping his nails against the bowl of his glass and chewing his lower lip. Enjolras half-expects him to start rubbing at his gums, but the thought is so ugly that Enjolras immediately puts it out of his head. 

“So—democratic anarchy?” Grantaire says. “That's what you're looking at?”

“If the world worked without a ruler, it'd be a perfect world,” Enjolras says.

“And a perfect people.”

“Seems unlikely,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire actually smiles. “You're getting so patient, Apollo.”

“Maybe you're just appealing to my better nature.”

“I've always thought that was a stupid phrase. People only have one nature.”

“All people? Or each individual?”

“That's for you to find out, I suppose,” Grantaire says, foot bumping Enjolras's ankle again. He half-smiles, finishes his glass, and excuses himself to the bathroom. It takes Enjolras a huge amount of restraint not to follow.

*

Joly gets food poisoning in Santiago and stretches out on his hotel room bed, groaning and pressing his pillow against his face.

“I guess he was right to not eat street meats,” Grantaire says.

“He _didn't_ eat street meats. This is from McDonald's,” Musichetta says. “Can you go on tonight?”

Joly shrugs helplessly and then lurches upward, throws up into the trash can Musichetta has set next to him. 

“Fuck,” he says weakly when he's finished. 

“That's okay,” Grantaire says, squeezing his shoulder. “If you need the night off, that's fine.”

Joly looks up at him, feverish, eyes bright and cheeks red and the rest of his face much paler than usual. 

“Is that okay?” he says. “I just feel like _shit_. Speaking of—”

He's well enough to sprint to the bathroom this time, luckily, and Bossuet follows him.

“The things you do for love,” Grantaire says, making a face. “Okay, so he's not playing. I can cover for him.”

“You could play Joly's parts,” Musichetta agrees. “Or we could get one of the techs to sub on for him.”

“Do any of the techs know all the parts?”

“They could play rhythm and you could play lead,” Bossuet suggests, poking his head out of the bathroom. “Or we could get a Sank Amy guy to do it, but they'll be exhausted.”

“That works,” Grantaire says. “I mean me playing lead and a tech playing rhythm—there's no way we're going to make one of the Amies double up on shows.”

“Thanks, Grantaire!” Joly shouts from the toilet.

“Jesus,” Grantaire says. “Okay, I'm going to go get him some drugs and like, clear broth?”

“Clear broth?” Eponine says. “What the fuck is that?”

“I don't know—miso or something? I don't know, do you want to come with me? How do you say that? 'Sopa clara'?”

She rolls her eyes, but she's half-smiling. “There's actually this Spanish soup called consomé—I think there might be a Chilean version we can get?” 

Eponine pulls on her boots, and Grantaire follows her out of the room.

“Okay, fuck it, there's gotta be something near the hotel, right?”

“Do you have any pesos?”

“Yeah, I changed some money at the airport.”

“Coke money?” Eponine says. She glances across the hall at their bodyguard's room, then tugs Grantaire toward the elevator. “More?”

Grantaire shrugs. “I have to buy in small amounts 'cause we fly everywhere and I'm too brown to smuggle it.”

“Can you try a show without it?”

Grantaire frowns at her. Of course he can. “I was going to pop an Adderall tonight instead since I have to do Joly's parts.”

“Where are you getting _Adderall_?”

“Bossuet.”

“Right.” Eponine lights a cigarette the second they're outdoors, and Grantaire follows her lead.

It's great to have given their bodyguard the slip for once, just the two of them walking around a new city the way it used to be. No one notices them; they blend well enough with the other Santiago hipsters, Eponine in yet another leather jacket and Grantaire in army green, both looking dark and disheveled enough to hide in broad daylight. Downtown Santiago is gorgeous, and it's fall in this hemisphere, so the weather is lovely too. He can see the mountain ranges from almost any point in the city, a natural border that Grantaire imagines was very helpful back in pre-airplane days. Maybe still. 

They find a pharmacy and ask for food poisoning meds “para turistas que no son aventureros,” then ask for a nearby place where they can get soup.

“Why are there so many Asian fusion places here?” Grantaire asks, having crossed a street after only narrowly avoiding getting hit by a series of cars ignoring traffic rules. 

“Jesus, you're going to get us both killed,” Eponine says, out of breath. She lights another cigarette, offers Grantaire the pack. “And neither of us can fucking run anymore.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Grantaire says, taking her cigarettes and sprinting a block down, getting far enough ahead of her that when he stops, breathless, in front of a little soup place, it takes Eponine a minute to catch up.

She laughs when she reaches him, grabbing for her cigarettes, stowing them back in her pocket and throwing an arm around Grantaire's shoulders.

“I love South America,” she says. “I feel so happy here.”

“Me too,” Grantaire says. “The diaspora fucks us all, right?”

“But then it gives us the whole world to feel at home in.”

“I'm not South American.”

“But you feel it too.”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says, shoving both hands in his pockets and grinning up at the sun. “I do.”

*

Enjolras retreats to their hotel room before Grantaire almost every night, and most of the time Grantaire follows shortly after, sinking onto Eponine's bed and pulling his shoes off before looking across the room at Enjolras and smiling.

“You waited up for me,” he usually says, like he's still surprised, and Enjolras—up watching the news, or writing music, or catching up on one of the few TV shows he actually likes, or sometimes even reading—always smiles back.

“Obviously,” he says.

But sometimes Grantaire stays out late enough that even barely-medicated insomniac Enjolras falls asleep with a book in his lap and only wakes when Grantaire crawls into bed next to him, completely trashed but still oddly gentle, radiating that unique Grantaire smell, as if irreverence had a scent, cigarettes and weed and strong alcohol and sweat but also the slightest hint of cologne and something smoky and his shampoo. It lingers even after he showers most nights, and Enjolras curls around Grantaire, tucks his chin against his neck.

“Sorry for waking you up,” Grantaire whispers, and Enjolras kisses the underside of Grantaire's jaw and, together, they go to sleep.

*

The thing that Enjolras is pretty sure none of them get—except maybe for Feuilly, who has always felt the same about this as he has—is that this isn't so much an experimentation in celebrity and pop stardom as it is a war fought in radio waves and concert arenas instead of on battlefields.

Sometimes Enjolras thinks Combeferre almost gets it, but he, too, loves the music for the music's own sake, not merely as an end but for itself, and that makes Combeferre a better musician, Enjolras supposes, but he himself hasn't allowed himself to enjoy music for what it is in years. It's a tool to him, one he wields as well as any blacksmith with his hammer. Feuilly gets that, Enjolras thinks, winking at him across the stage one night before they start.

They've stripped down a bit for the South American leg. They still go out in circus clothing and makeup, but Stars objected to their flying all the shit they needed for their fake Congress set around, so instead they start each show with an instrumental rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner.” Once or twice, they've adapted it for the country they're currently in, but Javert always calls—personally, which means they're in trouble—and tells them they'll never get to tour South America again if they keep pissing off all its leaders.

So they're back to just the “Star Spangled Banner” now, which transitions smoothly—deliberately—into “Washington.” Enjolras sings most of it facing away from the audience, only to whirl around at the last moment to uproarious applause, fans screaming his name as he repeats the last words of the song with his fist thrown up in the air, almost a war chant, feigns a march.

And as much as Enjolras intellectualizes music and its purpose, this is his favorite moment every night, chiefly because he can't tamp down the thrill he gets at the crowds—tens of thousands now—screaming his name. He feels like Washington, the man and not the song, leading an attack on the Hessians on Christmas, sneaking in under their radar. Who “they” are now, two hundred years later, is vaguer—capitalists? Giant corporations? People getting rich off atrocity? The government? All government?—but the rush of it is still there, and Enjolras, for all that he thinks, constantly, of the best way to communicate his message, to spur the people onward, to spark a revolution, for all that—he can't help but love the sound of his name coming from sixty-thousand fans.

*

Hotel nights in South America involve Enjolras swapping rooms with Eponine so she can have the single to share with Combeferre, which Combeferre and Eponine both think Enjolras has agreed to out of the goodness of his heart.

Grantaire, who knows that the goodness of Enjolras's heart operates on a purely macrosocial scale, grins at Combeferre when this arrangement is decided.

“Really, you're just saving me from PDA,” Grantaire tells him, but later he lies on his bed with Enjolras, gazing at him. “This was a genius plan.”

“Did you know I have a genius level IQ?”

“You're such a dick.”

Enjolras snorts. “I don't really. I did get like a 2340 on the SAT though.”

“Really? You're going to do the Ivy League freshman thing?”

“As an Ivy League graduate, I'll have you know—”

“You're _such_ a dick,” Grantaire says, laughing and kissing Enjolras. 

Grantaire loves hotel nights with Enjolras, and because they rarely travel by tour bus in South America, they happen all the time, just the two of them and room service late into the night. Sometimes they make music—mostly separately, plucking out chords on a guitar and writing them down with occasional “That sounds good” from one another—but more often they enjoy each other's company, knowing that when this tour ends they'll be separated for a while. 

“I can't believe that by the end of this year, we'll have toured three continents,” Grantaire says. “Like … how wild is that?”

“Extremely,” Enjolras says. “Feuilly still wants to do a Middle East tour, but Jehan and Courfeyrac want to come out, so it might be difficult.”

“What about Asia?”

“Marius says we're weirdly big in Vietnam,” Enjolras says. “It could be fun. We'd have to do it without you, though.” He drags a finger across Grantaire's lip, thumb brushing his jaw. “It's going to be so strange touring without you.”

“I've never been to Asia,” Grantaire says, choosing to ignore all thoughts of a future without Enjolras's constant presence.

“I went to Japan once.”

“Did you like it?”

“I don't know,” Enjolras says. “I was kind of young. My dad was there on business. I was supposed to—get the hang of it, I guess.”

“Of business?”

“Yeah. We only went to Tokyo, but mostly I just saw the inside of our hotel room.” He talks without looking at Grantaire, who can't look at anything else. “It took a few days before I just started going outside alone, doing my own thing, but I don't speak any Japanese and I was so—if I'd been a little older, or had a smartphone, or—” He sighs. “I don't know. There are so many people.”

“In Tokyo?”

“Yeah. Everywhere. The world is—”

“Huge.”

“Yeah. And we're so—”

“Small,” Grantaire says. “So insignificant. One species on one planet in one solar system in one galaxy in one massive endlessly growing literally infinite universe … how can you think anything we do matters?”

“How can you think it doesn't?” Enjolras counters. “Out of all the coincidences that could've happened, the ones that did brought us here to this exact moment in space and time. We're astoundingly lucky. It's our duty to make something of that luck.”

“But the world is so big and so awful.” Grantaire shifts so that he's lying on one elbow, watching Enjolras. “How can we fix it?”

“We start small,” Enjolras says, closing his eyes. His hair fans out beneath him, like a halo. Or sunbeams. Or some less pointed, less heavy-handed imagery—the One Ring, a starburst, those gold circles on medieval paintings—but weren't those halos, too? “Not discrete changes. Small systemic reforms. We start small, and then get bigger.”

Something floods Grantaire's insides at this endless hard-edged optimism. It's absurd to think it, to think that for Grantaire, before they really knew each other, Enjolras was as close as it got to a god, vindictive and angry and merciless but beautiful, self-sacrificing—but for Enjolras, the only thing worth worshipping is hope, optimism, revolution. Grantaire leans forward to brush his lips against Enjolras's.

“You don't think it can happen,” Enjolras says, almost into Grantaire's mouth. 

“I think if anyone can make it happen, you can.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Because Enjolras confident, passionate, smart, angry, talented. Because—because of the way he made sure Combeferre got his vacation in Chicago. Because he agreed to that fateful date for Courfeyrac and Jehan in the first place, back in Middle of Nowhere, New England. Because subletters use his apartment almost for free when he's on tour, because he doesn't eat the croutons in his salads, because he loves lighting cigarettes even if he doesn't smoke them. “Because. I don't know. You believe it so fiercely that it's hard to disagree.”

“You disagree with everything else.”

“Yeah, because everything else doesn't make any sense.”

“I can't tell if you're full of shit or genuinely complimenting me.” Enjolras's eyes are open now, watching Grantaire with an odd sort of wariness.

“I guess you'll just have to wait and find out.” 

Grantaire kisses him again, and this time Enjolras kisses back, fingers tangled in Grantaire's hair, pulling him impossibly closer.

“I love this hotel,” Enjolras says.

“I love this hotel, too,” Grantaire agrees, and is dragged down once more.

*

Grantaire loses track of time. For all the variation in its ecosystems and landscapes, South America becomes a blur of nightclubs and art museums and cocaine and Enjolras and Asian fusion and always raw fish and Enjolras and music, constant music, whether they're playing it themselves or it's blasting from the speakers in yet another club or restaurant, scratchy hotel sheets, HBO with Spanish subtitles, Enjolras and his guitar a constant presence. Enjolras writes lyrics on a computer and Grantaire writes them in a notebook. Enjolras and Jehan exchange Google Docs full of notes, Jehan fixing flow, making the lyrics sound like lyrics and not a rallying call, Enjolras embedding that edge, that Enjolrasian edge, into everything. Sometimes he runs words by Grantaire, but more often he mumbles them under his breath and reaches over his guitar to type them, one-handed, before he forgets.

Grantaire gets to the point where he can't remember what it feels like to sleep on a bus anymore, but they fly enough that he knows precisely when to start gnawing on his gum as hard as possible to prevent ear poppage. He can't remember the way bland middle American landscapes blurred together beyond bus windows, but he's pretty sure he could find the ice machine in a Holiday Inn Express or Courtyard Mariott if you dropped him into one blindfolded. 

They do a ton of sightseeing, and he does a ton of cocaine, and he's just a little bit on edge most of the time, tension in his shoulders and in the rigid column of his neck, and he loves the nightlife in South America almost as much as he loves the art museums, the ruins, the old parts of major cities. Sometimes Enjolras goes with him, especially when he goes to historical sites, but more often it's Eponine talking to cab drivers in rapid Spanish before dragging Grantaire out of taxis several blocks too soon and leading him on a dizzying path through metropolitan areas to see art. Sometimes the whole band goes, and sometimes both bands, but regardless of who he's with, Grantaire feels, endlessly, the thrill of travel, that odd reaction he gets to seeing something new and foreign and realizing after examining it for a few moments that it isn't that new after all. Art, he decides in a museum that looks like a Candyland version of Hogwarts somewhere in Argentina, is art, and people are people, and that's why he likes South America so much.

“Not to mention the foods,” Eponine says, trailing behind him. “The music. The wine. The cultures. The languages.” She takes a picture of the intricately carved screen Grantaire is looking at. “I'm glad you're having fun.” 

“That's sweet.”

“Don't be an asshole. I mean it.” She bumps her shoulder against his. “I know you had a hard time last tour, and you just—you seem better this time around. I like that you come out now and actually do stuff.”

“I did stuff last tour,” Grantaire says.

But Eponine is right: he _does_ feel a lot better this tour, and it's not just because of Enjolras. It's something about being away from the U.S., possibly combined with a good cocktail of drugs and the knowledge that this tour won't last as long as the last one and the sheer lack of tour buses. 

“Do you want to grab food before soundcheck?” Eponine says, dropping the sentimental line of conversation as quickly as she started it. “I saw this restaurant nearby that had, like, giant barrels of dulce de leche in the window.”

“Does dulce de leche even count as food?” Grantaire says. “It's like saying you're having ketchup for dinner. It doesn't make any sense.”

“Would you eat ketchup with a spoon?”

“No.”

“Exactly,” Eponine says, triumphant, though over what Grantaire isn't sure.

He follows her out of the museum anyway, and they share some pastries and take a box full of empanadas back for the rest of their band.

*

Even when Enjolras does go out, he leaves most parties and clubs before Grantaire does, and Grantaire wonders if he does it because he doesn't want to raise suspicions or because he genuinely doesn't like partying. Grantaire always wants to follow, always forces himself not to, always gets caught watching Enjolras leave by Eponine.

“What's _with_ you lately?” Eponine says. “You've been following him around like a sick puppy.”

“I'm not a sick puppy,” Grantaire says.

“He's not being judgmental,” Combeferre says, arm slung around Eponine's shoulders. “I mean, well, probably he is, but he doesn't mean to be. He's just kind of a dick sometimes.” He gives Grantaire what's supposed to be an apologetic smile, but it's kind of wobbly because Combeferre can't hold his liquor. “He doesn't like partying. Never has, even in college.”

“But you do?”

Combeferre shrugs. “I like parties if I like the people there. It's good to loosen up, smoke a little, drink a little, dance a little. It's only healthy. Our lives are hectic and stressful.”

“Being famous is so hard,” Grantaire says, raising an eyebrow.

Combeferre laughs. “Fuck you,” he says. “But yeah, basically.”

“Well,” Grantaire says. “No reason we can't have fun without him here.”

Partying always gets a little reckless, a little desperate, when Enjolras isn't there anymore. It's disturbing, how much Grantaire feels like he needs to be around Enjolras at all times, that emptiness he gets inside if they go too long without seeing each other. He tells himself he's like a bear about to go into hibernation, gorging himself on berries and Enjolras before a long winter, that he'll be full enough to last several months without him if he just gets enough now. 

Someone offers him coke, and someone else offers him a joint, and Grantaire accepts both, knocks back another whiskey, and ignores the blackness at the edges of his vision.

*

The biggest difference between touring South America and touring North America is that South America involves way more flying. They travel by bus sometimes, but it's mostly two or three hour long flights between local airports, cheap enough that Stars springs for business class a few times.

Enjolras doesn't love flying. He doesn't mind it particularly, but it's uncomfortable and his ears pop and every now and then he's gotten panic attacks in airplane bathrooms and had to force himself calm with odd-smelling in flight tap water splashed against his face. 

Grantaire knows this, which is why Grantaire makes a point of sitting next to him during the three hour flight between Buenos Aires and Rio, letting Enjolras have the aisle seat for his need-for-an-escape-route-when-flying anxiety purposes. 

“I prefer window anyway,” Grantaire says when Enjolras asks him if he's sure, turning and grinning that grin of his, sunglasses low over his nose. 

Enjolras reaches up to tug them off, and reflexively Grantaire glances over Enjolras's shoulder, but he relaxes quickly, smile returning, distracting from the dark circles under his slightly bloodshot eyes. 

“Want to watch a movie?” Grantaire says. “I heard they have the new X-Men.”

“Really? That's what you want to watch?”

“Comic book movies have some merit,” Grantaire says, poking at Enjolras's screen to choose a movie. “I mean, not a _ton_ , and not this one, but—what, you want something critically acclaimed?”

“ _The Big Short_ ,” Enjolras says.

“God, you are so predictable,” says Grantaire, and when Enjolras looks, he realizes the film has already started.

Grantaire passes him an earbud, and they slump against each other and watch, only half-paying attention, Grantaire's hand tracing circles on Enjolras's knee under the blanket. Grantaire is always fidgety, but he's especially so this week, when he's doing one of the detoxes that allow him to convince himself he's not at least psychologically dependent on alcohol and possibly cocaine. 

But despite this nagging anxiety at the state of Grantaire's mental well-being, it's the first flight in a while that hasn't left Enjolras antsy and exhausted, and though he's tired after, he leaves the plane in a considerably better mood than he has in other airports.

“Hey,” Courfeyrac says, catching up to Enjolras at baggage claim and tapping him on the shoulder. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“You and Grantaire. All—cuddly.”

Enjolras shrugs, watching the carousel for his guitar. “We were just watching a movie.”

Courfeyrac frowns at him. “Right. Just watching a movie with the dude you once let feel you up in a restaurant and then hooked up with outside his bus and then didn't talk to for like a month.”

“We didn't hook up that day,” Enjolras says.

“Ah, so you _have_ hooked up.”

“You're so annoying,” Enjolras says, finding his luggage at last. “We were just—comfortable.”

“Comfortable,” Courfeyrac echoes, and then says nothing else.

*

Grantaire has never spent much time in the southern hemisphere, so that they're here now, switching from climate to climate as they go from higher altitudes to lower ones and beachfront towns to landlocked cities, and that it's sunny and humid in Rio during what amounts to very early spring back home, has thoroughly shocked his personal ecosystem. It's like the anti-seasonal affective disorder, and even though it's early April and it'd probably just be starting to warm up in New York City, somehow Grantaire feels cheered up anyway. He knows he owes a good deal of that to Enjolras, but sitting on the beach in fucking Brazil would probably cheer him up even if he were with like Edward Cullen or something equally ridiculous.

“Hey,” Enjolras says one day, when they're at an outdoor cafe on the beach before anyone else in their bands has woken up. Enjolras's tropical clothing is just like his non-tropical clothing, well-made and red and weirdly preppy and so obviously bought for him by someone else. But he's wearing actual swim trunks because they have an actual beach day planned, just the two of them, a giant bottle of sunscreen in Enjolras's backpack and a ton of weed in Grantaire's. Enjolras's sunglasses aren't as big as Grantaire's, but they're still obnoxious, celebrity sunglasses, half his face obscured. But they've snuck away from both the Sank Amy and Sardonic Colon bodyguards, and they're wearing little enough clothing as is, v-necks and shorts, so the giant sunglasses seemed like a smart plan. Enjolras's are Courfeyrac's, Grantaire is pretty sure. 

Grantaire's are—well—his. No one's ever said he isn't obnoxious. 

“Are we dating?”

“I don't think so,” Grantaire says, stealing potatoes off Enjolras's plate. “I think we'd have to go on dates to be dating.”

“Well—this is a date.”

“Is it?” Grantaire asks. “I don't think we asked each other. You just rolled off my bunk and said 'hey you hungry?'”

“And you were,” Enjolras says. “But even if you weren't, you would've said yes, right? That means this is a date.”

“Okay, so—we're on a date.”

“Not to mention the day we have planned. That's a great date. Like, some people take their dates to dinner and a movie. I brought you to _Brazil_.”

“I feel really like I brought _you_ to Brazil,” Grantaire says. “Considering it was my band's involvement that finally swayed Combeferre.”

“He would've come around,” Enjolras says dismissively, and then breaks out in a smile. “Okay, so we're dating.”

“We're dating,” Grantaire confirms. “You want to know anything else? Are you going to ask me if we're exclusive? Wanna pop out a ring right now?”

Grantaire ignores the irritation that burns suddenly to the forefront, thinking about Enjolras asking him to go steady or whatever when he doesn't even want to tell their bandmates what's going on. Instead, he smiles at Enjolras, steals more of his potatoes, waits for an answer.

“I mean,” Enjolras says. “I mean— _are_ we exclusive?”

Grantaire laughs, but Enjolras pouts.

“Sorry,” he says. “I don't really know what I'm doing. And I don't—like, I haven't slept with a lot of people, it's not really my thing, I'm not attracted to a ton of people, I don't know. I just want to know how you feel.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says, any semblance of annoyance gone. It's oddly endearing to see this strange insecure side of Enjolras, and it makes him care less that this is all secret. If Enjolras doesn't want the world to see this vulnerable side of him, then so be it. Grantaire himself feels lucky to be one of the privileged few to even know it exists. “I haven't wanted to so much as _look_ at anyone else since the first time I saw you. I kind of doubt that's going to change, but if it does, I'll let you know, okay?”

“So yes?”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, we're exclusive?”

Grantaire laughs again. “Yes. Until further notice, we are absolutely exclusive.”

“Okay,” Enjolras says. “Good.”

“Yeah.”

*

Enjolras has trouble sleeping. He always has, and it isn't one of the worst parts of his life, but it's frustrating nonetheless when he spends entire nights tossing and turning, running over potential song arrangements in his head until he exhausts himself into sleep. It's not as bad with Grantaire, who tends to be just as restless but seems calmer in Enjolras's presence these days, but some nights Enjolras still stays up staring at the ceiling instead of getting much-needed sleep.

After one such night, Combeferre surprises Enjolras with a coffee before Enjolras has even had the chance to fully wake up, standing at the door with a cup and peeking over Enjolras's shoulder at Grantaire's still-sleeping form. Enjolras shifts his body to hide the second, untouched mattress and accepts the paper cup.

“Thanks,” he whispers. “Grantaire's asleep.”

He moves to close the door, but Combeferre blocks him with a toe. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay,” Enjolras says. “Lobby?”

Combeferre nods, and they take a silent and uncharacteristically awkward elevator ride down the stairs, Enjolras in slippers and sweatpants and Combeferre fully dressed.

“What's up?” Enjolras says, when they're finally seated, an odd feeling of distress sinking over him. “Did something happen?”

“No,” Combeferre says. “I just—I know I've been sort of distant this tour. I wanted to apologize.”

If he's being honest, Enjolras hasn't noticed.

“Oh,” he says. “No, that's fine. I mean—it makes sense. Eponine's going to be on the opposite side of the country for a while, and then she'll be on the opposite side of the same continent. You two just want to spend a lot of time together.”

“I know you and Grantaire kind of get stuck together because you're the odd ones out,” Combeferre says. “I'm glad you two are getting along. It got kind of weird last tour.”

“We'd made up by the end,” Enjolras says. “Grantaire is—” Enjolras pauses. “He's a good guy. I—we're. Making it work.”

Combeferre is watching him, Enjolras thinks; his eyes are skeptical behind their glasses, ever so slightly narrowed. 

“He _is_ a good guy,” Enjolras says.

“That's not what I'm contesting.”

“If we were fighting like crazy every night, don't you think you would've noticed?”

“That's just it,” Combeferre says, leaning back in his chair and tilting his chin toward the ceiling. “I don't know that I would've noticed anything. I'm all—” He smiles, a little bashfully. “Distracted.”

“Combeferre,” Enjolras says. “I'm not a delicate plant. I promise you, you don't need to pay constant attention to me. I can get water and sunlight all on my own.”

Combeferre looks him over. “Come to think of it, you _do_ look tan.”

“Or pink.”

“I didn't want to be rude.”

“Joly keeps sneaking up on me and spraying me with sunscreen,” Enjolras says. “He's my one protector from melanoma.”

“He's right,” Combeferre says. Then he leans forward again, sighs. “You're sure you don't mind?”

“Positive.”

“Because—I mean, you and Grantaire argue a lot. Still. Like, I see how he gets on your nerves.”

“It's fine,” Enjolras says. “Really. I like him. We argue, but we—it's like you said. We get along.”

“Okay,” Combeferre says. “Do you want another coffee?”

No. He wants to go back to his hotel room, his warm bed, his—boyfriend.

“I'm actually going to go get dressed and shower and stuff,” Enjolras says. “Thanks, though.”

“You're welcome,” Combeferre says, and Enjolras, feeling at last free, has to resist the urge to run to the elevator.

*

They skip out on the party early so they can spend the last night of their South American tour together, and if Grantaire has ever had more sex in one night, he can't remember it. Not that he can remember much from this night, either—it's more of a mess of aching tenderness and hazy memories of sharpness, biting, a twist of Enjolras's nipple, Enjolras's teeth at his neck.

But Enjolras is asleep now, on his side, facing away from Grantaire as is his habit. His shoulders rise above the sheets, and though they're thin when he's upright they slope wonderfully now, pale except for the smattering of freckles where the Brazilian sun burned him on their beach day. 

It still awes Grantaire that this is all his, that if he reaches out and kisses Enjolras's shoulder it'll be sweet and warm and not at all creepy. That Enjolras wants Grantaire, even if it seems impossible for Enjolras to want Grantaire as much as Grantaire wants him. That Enjolras will miss him, too. 

And that's the worst of it, Grantaire thinks, discomfort radiating from the pit of his stomach. Every breath he takes now is one fewer he'll get to spend with Enjolras; every moment that passes brings them closer to their inevitable separation. 

_You breathe the life back into me_ , Enjolras had said, but what if, what if once he's away from Grantaire for long enough, the smoke clears and breathing becomes easy again? What if Enjolras misread the situation—what if, like Grantaire, the depth of this feels like it's drowning him instead?

“I can tell you're not sleeping,” says Enjolras, his voice dulled by his own sleep. 

“How?”

“Because usually by this point you've either wrapped an arm around me or monopolized my pillow space.” Grantaire stifles his laughter, resulting in a sound like a sharp exhale. Enjolras turns over to look at him. “What's wrong?”

“I'm just—I'm going to miss this.”

Enjolras gives Grantaire a sad, sleepy smile. “Me too,” he says, scooting closer. “But don't worry. It's only a month.”

And then another four months in Europe, and then a few weeks back in the States, and then countless tours after that until they either break up or quit their bands, and the extent of his desperation threatens to strangle Grantaire. Enjolras who isn't good with people, Enjolras who always accidentally offends Grantaire, Enjolras who puts his foot in his own lovely mouth almost every time he tries to express human emotion, Enjolras brings a hand up and cups Grantaire's trembling face in his. 

“I'll miss you more,” Enjolras says, kissing Grantaire so gently that Grantaire feels like he's going to shake apart. He moves away a little, close enough that they're still sharing almost the same air, and laces his fingers through Grantaire's. “Now. Go back to sleep.”

*

And then the tour is over and they're all flying back to North America, Grantaire to LAX, Enjolras to O'Hare, and Grantaire is very tanned and Enjolras is very freckled, and they've both done irreparable damage to their skin because they haven't listened to Joly's constant nagging about wearing sunscreen and have in fact almost completely ignored the SPF 50 he bought everyone when they drove into L.A. what now feels like years ago.

“I love South America,” Enjolras says, leaning against the glass panes of the smoking shelter at the airport, trying to look casual. “I'll miss it.”

“You should tweet that,” Grantaire says, pressing his cigarette butt into the ashtray. 

“Fans'll love it,” Eponine says, finishing her cigarette, too.

They've spent too much time in airports and on airplanes, and Enjolras has started to get annoyed instead of sort of awed and charmed at the way the temperature in airports is always the same no matter what country you're in or what time of year it is, at the canned way air comes out of vents in airports and on planes so it barely feels like you're breathing actual air—the way you know someone created this air just for this purpose, for people to breathe, none of the smog or pollution or scent of the air outside the airport, back on the ground. It should be scientifically magnificent, and Enjolras supposes that it is, except he can't feel that way because he's so irrationally irritated, desperate to touch Grantaire and annoyed that Eponine is there, that the airport has a steady trickle of people in it even this early in the morning or late at night depending on how look at it, and Enjolras has to actively resist leaning over to kiss Grantaire in front of all of them.

Grantaire seems to have the same thought, because he asks her, “Shouldn't you be saying bye to Combeferre?” not particularly kindly, and Eponine glares at him, then sighs.

“You're right. I'll see you at our gate. Don't forget—”

“I know, I know, twenty-three,” Grantaire says. “I'll buy you a bottle of pisco at duty free.”

“Thanks.”

She leaves them there alone, Grantaire looking oddly naked without a cigarette between his lips, and Enjolras reaches out to entwine their fingertips.

“She hates saying goodbye,” Grantaire says.

“I know the feeling.”

It's silent between them for a moment, Grantaire looking out of the clear panes of the smoking shelter at the passing travelers, Enjolras looking at the spot on Grantaire's neck that still looks bruised from the night before and ignoring his temptation to drag a thumb over that spot, to see what reaction it elicits from Grantaire. Grantaire is completely still for once, not even his usual shakiness breaking through this odd little reverie of his. 

“I'm really going to miss you,” Enjolras says.

“Me too,” Grantaire says. “But we'll see each other soon. One month, then we'll meet up in L.A. for a few days, then—”

“Then off to Europe,” Enjolras says. He feels like it's the last day of high school or something, like he's parting ways with someone for what might be for good even though he knows that's not what's happening. “Separately.”

“Separately.”

“For four months.”

“Not that long,” Grantaire says. He turns to look at Enjolras at last, but behind his sunglasses, his expression is inscrutable. “You'll be promoting your album. Constantly doing interviews. Shooting videos. You won't even notice I'm not there.”

Optimism looks horrible on Grantaire, Enjolras decides.

“Don't be—” There's no one there, the long corridor momentarily empty, and Enjolras kisses Grantaire as quickly as he can manage, tries to hide it under the guise of pulling off Grantaire's sunglasses. “—ridiculous. I notice when you're gone for two minutes.”

“Jesus,” Grantaire blinks at the sudden brightness. “Fuck,” he says, and then finally acknowledges what Enjolras is thinking: “Two weeks was bad enough.”

“I love you,” Enjolras says. “I—when I said I loved South America. That was—I meant that.”

Grantaire smiles, that adorable goofy smile he does when he's not trying to look cool and rockstar-y. “I know. And I—I love South America too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epigraph from Panic at the Disco's "When the Day Met the Night," aka the soundtrack to this fic.
> 
> This fic will have three parts with two interludes. Interludes will include some of the fun(!) graphics from last time, including a profile of Enjolras in Vanity Fair that desperately wishes it were a puff piece. So far I'd say I'm done with one interlude, about a third of the graphics, half of part 2, and a quarter of part 3. I'm going to try and go for a part every two weeks, but the chapters are long and the graphics take a while, so it could take a little bit longer than that.
> 
> If you have suggestions for face claims (especially for Grantaire and Enjolras, but also for the rest of the Amis), please let me know!
> 
> Please leave a comment/question/suggestion/criticism! Let me know if there are any graphics you'd want to see (Courfeyrac's twitter feed? Bahorel's instagram? A really long technical interview with Marius about linguistics?). Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come talk to me at [my fic side blog](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com)


	2. interlude i

interlude

**la→chicago→new york; chicago→new york→chicago→la**

 

Los Angeles is pandemonium, one guard per Colon, LAX packed with fans screaming and taking pictures in a way Grantaire is pretty sure they haven't ever before. Bossuet makes them stop to sign autographs, and Grantaire, exhausted from the flight (Rio to Bogota to L.A., a two hour layover in Colombia that was mostly sprinting to pick up their luggage, Grantaire pumped full of Xanax and airplane booze, Eponine beside him sound asleep the whole time—it's odd to fly without Enjolras again, but Grantaire watches a stupid movie all the same, and doped up as he is it's easy to imagine that the head on his shoulder belongs to Enjolras and not Eponine), finds it difficult to force himself to smile. 

“R! R!” “Over here, Grantaire!” “I loved the video for Blue Moon!” “Buy me a beer, Grantaire!” “I'll buy _you_ a beer, Grantaire!” “I don't think you're a shitty band!” “Grantaire—”

In the end, Grantaire feels drained, his name sloppily signed on a few dozen arms and shirts and album covers and photographs of himself, his stupid magazine smolder looking at him from the glossy black and whites, eyeliner to edge him up or maybe exotify him—he doesn't know, and it's hard to care, and he tacks on a smile for a few pictures and then, thankfully, gets to claim his bodyguard is dragging him away.

“Why are you in such a shitty mood?” Musichetta asks as they're herded into a giant car. “I thought you'd be glad to be back in L.A.”

“I just—it's just been a long flight.”

Musichetta frowns. “That's it?”

“I wish we were in New York instead.”

“It's just two weeks,” Musichetta says. “Two weeks, two shows, recording a few demos for Stars, some press with MTV, and then we can go home.” She squeezes Grantaire's hand in reassurance. “I miss it too.”

Grantaire tries to let himself be comforted, but he's annoyed anyway, the cloudy kind of bad mood he gets when someone's woken him up after too little sleep. He doesn't have any illegal drugs on him, so he pops another Xanax, forces himself to relax, turns on his phone.

There are a few Snaps from Sank Amy members during their layover at the airport in Atlanta, all looking surprisingly fresh-faced for people who have just spent way too much time on an airplane. One text from Enjolras, a complaint about Courfeyrac getting racially profiled before their connecting flight to Chicago. There's a voicemail from Enjolras, too, but Grantaire decides to wait until he's in his own room in the beach house Stars is renting for them. 

Beside him in the Uber, Eponine's head is pressed against the window, her phone in her palm but not yet turned on. Grantaire wonders how much she misses Combeferre already.

 _I spent like an hour and a half showing customs everything in my bag_ , Grantaire texts Enjolras. He thinks for a while about his next words, about Enjolras telling Grantaire all about his love for South America, about what he wants Enjolras to see when he turns on his phone in Chicago. _Miss you._ He pauses, then— _I love you._

*

Chicago is two weeks of last touches on the album, finalizing liner notes, a rerecording of one vocal track and a few more instrumentals, and Enjolras is exhausted and it shows in the sound of his voice when he listens to the recording back.

“I really like that,” the producer for this song, a tall white man with dreadlocks who clearly hasn't listened to Sank Amy ever in his life without being forced to by radio play, tells him. Enjolras thinks about the fact that he's going to get a credit in the liner notes and bristles, but he's a Stars name, one of their favorites, works with all their biggest acts, and Cosette apologized profusely for it. _i know i know but this isn't my choice_ , she told him via text. _remember: it's a trade off. listen now & you get your way on something later on._ As if Enjolras hasn't been choosing his battles since he learned how to read. “Really raw. Can you do it again?”

Enjolras swigs from the bottle of water the producer offers him and resents Cosette and Stars and the music industry in general. He takes a moment to let himself feel it, that irritation, and then forces it away: _I am a solder. I have seen worse sights than this._

“Yeah,” he says. “What was wrong with it?”

“I just want to see how far we can push it,” the producer says, holding a lighter over his pipe and doing a hit, filling the room up with the acrid scent of potent marijuana. “You want?”

“No,” Enjolras says. 

“Probably better for your voice if you don't.”

 _Probably better for my voice if we stop pushing it_ , Enjolras thinks.

He sings again, and his voice cracks, and the producer motions for him to keep going.

“This is great,” the producer says. “Really raw.”

“I don't like it,” Enjolras says. Even speaking, his voice sounds wrong. He massages his throat with one hand.

“Why not?”

“Well, my voice cracks halfway through the first chorus,” Enjolras says. “Can we listen to the whole thing through again?”

“I like the last few lines of this version,” the producer says. “You sound desperate.”

“I don't want to sound desperate.”

“Well, sounding self-assured isn't exactly working for you.”

Enjolras's eyes flick up, and for the first time he considers that the producer might actually know what he's talking about. “What do you recommend?”

“We can use the raw files from the original version and splice in some of the laws few lines from this one. Give me a minute.” 

Enjolras makes himself tea while White Dreads works, pours copious amounts of honey in it. His vocal chords throb.

“What do you think?” White Dreads asks, playing Enjolras a rough version of the edited track a few minutes later. 

He's right, Enjolras has to admit: the exhaustion in his voice comes off as a plea.

“It's better,” Enjolras says.

The rest of Sank Amy trickle in to approve it, all of them having rerecorded parts of their own tracks for the album, and then Enjolras, exhausted, goes to meet Combeferre for dinner.

“Maybe you should take a break, dude,” Combeferre, who has been working both with other producers to finish songs and with Feuilly to storyboard their next music video _and_ has done a few radio interviews in the four days since they've been back, tells him. “I know it's hard to believe, but you _are_ human. And humans need _rest_.”

“You're one to talk,” Enjolras says. “I'll take a day off if you do.”

“Fine,” Combeferre says. “Tomorrow. I'll bring a pizza over. No talk of music at all. If we rest for one day, we'll be better the day after.”

Enjolras considers disagreeing, but only for a moment. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Are we inviting anyone else?”

“Not the couples,” Combeferre says, wrinkling his nose at the prospect. Stars has an office in Chicago, and Marius is crashing with Cosette while they're there—and Jehan and Courfeyrac are disgustingly adorable together, which is the last thing Enjolras wants to see. “I don't want to—whatever. I'll tell Feuilly and Bahorel.”

Enjolras thinks of Eponine, her artfully chipped polish, her changing rotation of facial piercings. “Is that why you've been working so hard? To—I mean, because you miss her?”

Combeferre looks at Enjolras helplessly. “I don't know what's worse,” he says. “Being with her every day before we were together, or being without her so much now that we are.”

Enjolras considers it, sips at the wine Combeferre prescribed. “The first one's pretty bad, but the second is definitely worse.”

“And you'd know,” Combeferre says, raising an eyebrow.

“They're my friends, too,” Enjolras says defensively. “Just because I'm not—I mean, you know, I'm close with a lot of the Colons, it's not—”

“Yeah, we know, you and Grantaire are best friends now because you had to avoid Eponine and me for so long,” Combeferre says. “You were a good sport, switching rooms with her. I know you don't like to share, and I know you didn't love Grantaire before.”

“He's—he's not that bad,” Enjolras says, which is such an understatement that he feels the wine go sour in his mouth.

Combeferre seems to sense this, because he smiles at Enjolras almost sympathetically. “At least you don't complain about him so much anymore. You know, we all wondered if you two would get together or kill each other, but it all kind of just fizzled out.”

“We're,” Enjolras says, and finds it oddly difficult to conjure up the word: “friends.”

Combeferre tops off his glass. “Tomorrow. No talk of missing anyone. We'll watch Netflix, we'll eat pizza, and we'll smoke weed. Well, the rest of us will. You, as always, are an ascetic, far removed from the lesser temptations of man.”

“Fuck off,” Enjolras mumbles, but he finds himself laughing into his glass anyway.

*

  
  


  


  
bigger: [i](https://i.imgur.com/Z5OKLFz.jpg) [ii](https://i.imgur.com/JnrDfZ1.jpg) [iii](https://i.imgur.com/ppvh66O.jpg) [iv](https://i.imgur.com/3kUhWTg.jpg)   


*

After Chicago, it's two days in New York for press before going back to Chicago for album release, then off to L.A. to shoot video footage and do more press, the Today Show and Good Morning America and Jimmy Fallon and SNL. The SNL afterparty goes on forever, well past dawn, but Enjolras excuses himself after only an hour.

His hotel room is small but luxurious, too much, the kind of space he wouldn't ever choose for himself. Enjolras thinks about that, the extent to which he lets Stars PR people make his choices for him, from most of his clothing down to where he lives, and they pay for it all too, call it branding—but he's talked about it with Courfeyrac before, and Courfeyrac has adequately convinced him that branding to this extent is necessary, vital, for a band with their success. He can hear Courfeyrac's voice in his head: _You can't just wear Che t-shirts everywhere like you did in college, Enjolras, Jesus, I love you but I'm glad they got you a stylist._

When he clicks through the channels—looking, really, for the news—Enjolras finds himself charmed to see the newest Sardonic Colon video on some derivative of MTV. Grantaire always looks halfway between hilarious and hot in Sardonic Colon's videos, self-serious, all stubbly and strung out with his jaw tensed up and his cheekbones hollowed out with makeup. There's eyeliner, too, and Enjolras laughs but then finds that his throat goes dry on a close up of Grantaire's face, the warmth in his eyes brought out by the dark smudges around them. 

The “Blue Moon” video is something no one in Sank Amy ever would've thought up, the members of Sardonic Colon surfing while fully dressed in their emo nostalgia attire, complete with Eponine in a black and grey striped hoodie and Grantaire in jeans so tight it's surprising they weren't wet in the first place. Enjolras remembers Snapchats from that week, Grantaire in a wetsuit, grinning, _we're learning how to surf i'll teach u in brazil_.

It's true that Sardonic Colon take full advantage of the location, and Enjolras has seen—and participated in the creation of—enough music videos to know that of all the ones shot in L.A., almost none actually look like L.A. This one does, the surfing interlaced with shots in a house party, actual Blue Moon beer served on platters like champagne while Musichetta pushes men away and Grantaire dances with a girl whose presence Enjolras forces himself not to envy, Grantaire's fingers low on her hips before she turns around—and she, too, has a platter of Blue Moon. Grantaire takes one, and okay, Enjolras is definitely jealous. 

He misses Grantaire enough that it feels ridiculous now, a heavy load on his back that he can easily shed by just—calling him. 

So he does. 

First on Facetime, which Grantaire doesn't answer, which annoys Enjolras but not enough to really care, and then just normally, then once more before Grantaire actually answers.

“Enjolras,” he says. “Hi.”

Enjolras closes his eyes. He last spoke to Grantaire two days ago, and it terrifies him how dependent he is on Grantaire now, how much he needs the sound of his voice to function normally on a day to day basis. It happened so quickly, and he felt first contempt and then attraction and then suddenly this strange new feeling, this thing called “love” apparently, and now Enjolras feels like he's missing—not a limb, but something even more essential. What was it he'd told Grantaire back then? It's like he's missing—air.

“Enjolras?” Grantaire says again, and Enjolras laughs.

*

“I'm tired and I miss you,” Enjolras says, his voice weirdly magnified. He's one of those people who sounds different over the phone. Older, deeper. More tired. But not an ounce of his charm is mitigated by the lack of his actual appearance, which Grantaire thinks is unfair.

“Me too,” Grantaire says, even though it's midnight in L.A. and he's barely started partying, coke laid out on the coffee table and several people waiting for him to return from the porch so they can all do lines together.

“I just saw the 'Blue Moon' video,” Enjolras says. “I think it's an interesting concept.”

“Thanks,” Grantaire says. That's the closest he's ever gotten to a compliment regarding his music with Enjolras, Grantaire is pretty sure. “My favorite part was the free beer.”

“That's not super surprising,” Enjolras says dryly. “I liked the contour.”

“Surprised you know what a contour is.” Grantaire can see the ocean from the porch, beating steadily against the sand. He doesn't love L.A., but he likes it here, close to the water, this late at night. No one's around except for him, and he thinks that if he didn't have plans tonight it might be nice to just smoke out here for a while, staring out at the Pacific and thinking about Enjolras. 

“Are you kidding? Do you know how many Youtube videos I had to watch to learn how to do my show makeup?”

Grantaire laughs, and so does Enjolras, but both of them cut off too early and it sounds—wrong, somehow, empty, metallic. Grantaire lights a cigarette to give himself something to do with his hands other than drum them uselessly against his thighs.

“I hate this,” Enjolras says suddenly. “I hate it so much. I hate feeling like this, I hate—I hate this.”

“I miss you too, Enjolras,” Grantaire says.

“It's weird that I'm in New York and you're not.”

“Maybe one day we'll coincide. I can show you all the best bars, and you can hate them, and then I'll take you to Zucotti Park, and you can feel all superior and political.”

Enjolras laughs, but he cuts off too early again, sighs. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Clubbing with the girls.”

“Not Joly and Bossuet?”

“Joly didn't have a great day with the anxiety, so he just wants to smoke weed and watch movies or something.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Want me to stay home and Skype with you instead?”

“No,” Enjolras says. “I need to go to bed.” He does sound exhausted, suppressed yawns in every word, but he doesn't stop talking. “We have a ton to do tomorrow. We're doing press all day before we have to fly back to Chicago for album release and then fucking L.A. for _more_ press, and I have to do one of those playlist things on Fuse early tomorrow.”

“What songs are you putting on it?” Grantaire says, half-hoping—

But no. Enjolras lists the usual, songs about revolution written by the proletariat. Keny Arkana and Shadia Mansour. The Wall, obviously. Only one track by Rage Against the Machine.

“Sounds pretty standard.”

“I think it's just like my top ten on Spotify,” Enjolras says. “You know, Combeferre thinks I'm crazy to use Spotify.”

“Maybe you are.”

“Maybe.” There's a sound in Enjolras's voice like movement, and when he talks next, Grantaire is sure he's lying down. “Are we going to see each other before EuroTour?”

“I was thinking of coming to Chicago for your album release party,” Grantaire says. “I mean, since we're missing each other in L.A. _and_ New York. Might as well meet halfway.”

“I—really?” 

The smile is clear in Enjolras's voice, and Grantaire feels sort of desperate, like he's in way past his depth. “Yeah. I—you know, I really liked it when I was there with Combeferre last time, and you know, I like seeing Sank Amy, even if your lyrics _are_ heavy-handed, and—it'd be fun, supportive, whatever, right?”

“You sound like Joly,” Enjolras says, still with that smile there. “Please come. I mean, not if you can't make it, obviously, but if you can—”

The thought of it fills Grantaire with a heady warmth. “I'm excited.”

“Me too.” Enjolras yawns. “I can't wait to see you. Have fun tonight.”

“Goodnight, Enjolras.”

“Goodnight, Grantaire.”

*

  


[bigger](https://i.imgur.com/DZHBGzv.jpg)

*

In Los Angeles, sleep isn't even a tertiary concern. Parties don't start until two or three in the morning or later, and they go on and on, magnificent benders that seduce everyone in the city who can afford them, euphoria, laughter, dancing hard enough to need Gatorade to rehydrate, lines off everything from bathroom sinks to dusty copies of _Meditations on an Emergency_ to body parts wholly disassociated from their owners.

Grantaire feels like he's on fire all the time in L.A., so much coke he can barely sit down, feels like he's the greatest thing in every room he's in. It's not a feeling he's used to, but it's a feeling he feels like he can get used to, so he spends his first week there partying harder than he ever has in his life from late night to midday, skyping with Enjolras in the afternoons and evenings if Enjolras has time, and shooting videos whenever he and his band can make time before, inevitably, going out again.

They make friends.

Everyone based in L.A. or spending time in L.A., famous people, rich people, hot people, new Twitter follows, Cosette at a lunch meeting telling them they're getting bigger—“Kylie Jenner had your song on her Snapchat last week, it was amazing, you rocketed to the top of Spotify's most listened to in the U.S. list, great job, keep it up!”—fans outside of parties, fans at restaurants, fans at the beach, and Grantaire is overwhelmed, constantly signing, constantly taking pictures—

In college, Grantaire drank to excess something like four nights a week, spent most of his evenings stumbling around looking for more to drink or someone to hook up with and most of his mornings battling one nasty hangover after another. He's lightened up considerably in the time since, started incorporating drugs that make him feel less like shit, started seeing a therapist, and in general started taking part in much healthier habits (or so he tells himself).

But L.A. brings all of it back again, bender after bender, so much time spent stumbling around completely trashed that Grantaire can't remember most of who he meets every night, waking up to new names in his contacts and absurd amounts of twitter replies whenever the right person follows him. 

It's amazing, it's electric, it's fundamentally unsustainable, and Grantaire finds himself loving every single drop of it.

*

“Marius did great,” Cosette practically coos.

She's tan from only twenty-four hours in L.A., and her manicured fingertips rake through Marius's hair as they all eat together, a meeting disguised as dinner. She's supposed to briefing them on the rest of the week's press and their album release party over a meal, but Marius has just given an interview to Buzzfeed, and apparently it's the best piece of press any of them have done, ever.

“He was so articulate,” Cosette says. “Communicated his points effectively. Managed to talk about himself and about politics. Came off as human.” She gives Enjolras a pointed look. “You'll love it, Combeferre.”

“ _I_ love it,” says Courfeyrac, who Enjolras is not entirely convinced does not have a lingering crush on Marius. “What did you say? Anything special for us?”

“It was just about linguistics and literature,” Marius says, blushing a little. “You'll all think it's boring.”

“Honestly, Marius,” Courfeyrac says, grinning wider still. “When has _Combeferre_ ever found something boring?”

“He's right,” Combeferre says, looking up from his meal, some chef's-special confection. Enjolras, halfway through his meal (“Caesar salad with chicken, dressing on the side please.”), is still shocked at how ridiculously trendy this restaurant is. “I'm blessed with the ability to find literally everything interesting.”

“A virtue I'd kill for,” Cosette says, the hand that isn't in Marius's hair checking her phone. “You have three days until the album's out. Before then, you have twenty-four interviews between you—you're going to be fucking _everywhere_ , people are going to want to vomit if they hear any of your ridiculous names. Most of them are over the phone, though—Enjolras, pay attention, stop looking at your phone like a sad puppy, CNN's not going to send you a 'the revolution has started' notification.” 

Enjolras looks up guiltily—his phone is silent anyway, no notifications in sight, but it's early enough that Grantaire might actually still be asleep. 

“Your Google calendars should be updated—if not, email my assistant and we'll get it sorted. You all have a couple of hours off, then it's an acoustic show, but you can thank Courfeyrac and Bahorel for that.”

“Sorry that we don't want our fans to never get to see us,” Bahorel says, rolling his eyes. “Free tickets to a secret show is the only way some of them'll be able to afford it.”

“He's right,” Feuilly says. “We should do more of these.”

“I can arrange for a few acoustic performances in Europe,” Cosestte says, taking her hand out of Marius's hair at last to use both hands on her phone, typing even faster than before. “What if I have you do a few songs in a park or something a few times a week? We can send three or four of you and a bodyguard, make them free, make them far enough from the venue that they're really special for the fans who can't afford the show.”

“Will Stars go for that?” Marius says.

“If they don't, we'll just do it anyway,” Bahorel says. Enjolras's phone vibrates in his lap, and Enjolras blinks down at it. “What are they going to do? Force us not to play music at the park?”

“We might need permits,” Cosette says. “I'll have my team look into it.” 

“Enjolras, you up for it? A few extra songs per day?”

“As long as we have them early and there's plenty of rest between them and soundcheck, he'll be fine.”

_i don't like la but i weirdly feel like i fit right in here?_

“He doesn't even have to be there every day. Jehan, Combeferre, and I can sing too.” 

_you know that kanye song 'no more parties in la'? i feel like i'm the person he's begging to stop partying in la_

“Right. If we scatter it so that none of us are ever playing extra songs two days in a row, I think we'll be good.”

_& i'm just over here like no fuck off kanye there is literally nothing to do in la other than party. if u wanted culture you should've stayed in chicago._

“Of course—” Cosette's voice cuts through the rapid chatter. “There are some days where it won't be possible, some cities where you'll only get to do the scheduled evening show because of timing and the buses and everything. Are you cool with that?”

A chorus of “yeah, sure”s.

_anyway lol that's my i-hate-la-but-i-love-partying-in-la rant. how are you? can we talk abt how quickly cosette tanned? i thought all blonds got all lobster-y in the sun like you_

“Enjolras?”

Enjolras starts to text back, erases his message, starts it again. He's smiling despite himself, biting his lip, wishing Grantaire were there next to him instead of 1700 miles away.

“Enjolras!”

He looks up, startled.

“Dude, what's going on with you?” Bahorel says. “Sitting over there smiling at your lap like my sixth grade tech ed teacher—what's the deal?”

“Uh—sorry,” Enjolras says. “I just—there was a funny tweet.”

Next to him, Courfeyrac tries to get a look at Enjolras's phone. Enjolras hits the power button, looks around the table.

“Did I miss something?”

“We were just trying to confirm that you want to do this,” Cosette says. 

She, Enjolras notices, doesn't need to look up from _her_ phone. 

“Yeah, well, that's because my phone is my job,” she says. “Can you pay attention?”

Enjolras blinks at her, feeling stupid, wondering if she can read minds or if he's just spoken out loud without meaning to.

“Are you okay?” Courfeyrac says quietly into Enjolras's ear a moment later as the table dissolves into chatter that Enjolras feels too tired to follow. “You really do seem kind of off.”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says. “Fine.”

Courfeyrac still looks doubtful, pushing Enjolras some of his deconstructed dessert. 

“I can't believe we came to the trendiest restaurant in Chicago and you got something you could literally get at the Panera Bread near your apartment.”

“I'm not exactly a foodie.”

“That's the biggest understatement I've ever heard in my life,” Courfeyrac says. “Can you—fucking eat? Please. Some sugar and fat, not just, like, lean protein and brown rice.”

“I don't like brown rice,” Enjolras says, accepting the dessert, whatever it's supposed to be. It tastes good, Enjolras decides, and he has another bite before returning it to Courfeyrac. “Thanks.”

“We're going to a boozy ice cream place after this,” Courfeyrac says. “You're not allowed to say no. We have two hours of free time, and you're going to enjoy it.”

“Okay,” Enjolras says.

“That's it? Just 'okay'? No 'sorry Courf but I have to go and write a treatise on Locke's second treatise'? No 'I'm busy tonight trying to start a revolution on twitter can we maybe have a night in so you can help'?”

“Maybe you're right,” Enjolras says. “I'll go home and—”

“No, fuck off, you're coming out,” Bahorel says from across the table. “And you're turning off your phone.”

“No, I—”

“I think that's a good idea,” Combeferre says. “Cosette, anything else?”

“No,” she says. “I'll email you all. Check your calendars constantly.”

She pays with the company card, leaves the waiter a hefty tip, and departs arm in arm with Marius.

Combeferre watches them, frowning a little.

“What?” Enjolras says.

“Nothing, I just—I'm thinking about Eponine.”

“Of course.”

“I need some boozy ice cream too,” Combeferre says, standing abruptly. “Let's go, gang, there's an Uber waiting for us.”

Everyone follows him out of the restaurant, and Enjolras, looking down regretfully, shuts off his phone.

*

  
  


  
[apple music](https://itunes.apple.com/us/playlist/fuse-sank-amys-enjolras-takes/idpl.a900c88d4d124013be37f1f6d92c7da3) | [soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/flybbfly/sets/fuse-o-sank-amys-enjolras)  


*

“Remember when we were just a shitty band?”

They're tucked into a booth at a bar for once instead of a party, all five of them exhausted and Bossuet nursing a sprained ankle. Musichetta stirs her old fashioned with a straw and stares into the middle distance. 

“Yes,” says Grantaire, who has the worst headache of his life and is two whiskeys in. “Worse drugs, fewer hangovers.” 

Joly looks up from where he's leaning on Musichetta's shoulder. “I literally smoked a bowl with one of the Bachelors last night. Like—is this what selling out feels like?”

He says it like it's a joke, but it doesn't land that way. Bossuet stands abruptly, mumbles something about the bathroom and hobbles away on his crutches, and Eponine spins her phone around on the table a few times, not meeting any of their eyes. 

“We haven't sold out,” Grantaire says. “We're not—it's not like we've changed ourselves.”

“Haven't we?” Musichetta says.

“That's not what I meant.”

“We're _celebrities_ now,” Eponine says, casting a slightly dirty look at their bodyguard, who is sitting at a table nearby. His name is Oliver, an odd name for a body guard. “How many pictures of yourself have you signed in the last two weeks?”

“I really fucking hate how I look on the Rolling Stone cover,” Joly says.

Grantaire laughs. “That was the most celebrity thing you've ever said.”

“At least we're not in airports all the time anymore.” Eponine stands to get them another round. “A whiskey, two old fashioneds, merlot?”

They all nod their assent, and she leaves the table.

When Grantaire looks up, Musichetta is looking at him.

“I would've thought you'd be the most bothered by this.”

“I'm too high to be bothered most of the time,” he says, which is honest but makes Musichetta look concerned.

“When's your next detox?” Joly says.

“I—don't know, really.”

“Maybe it should start soon.”

Grantaire considers the dull throbbing in his head, the sharp craving in the back of his throat, the tightly-wound anxiety tucked beneath his ribcage. He's not sure if it's new or if it's always there, if it's caused or mitigated by the cocaine, if a detox will make it worse or better. “Maybe you're right.”

“Maybe we should all try it,” Musichetta says. “It's not like Grantaire's the only one doing a ton of drugs.”

“It's _weed_ , 'Chetta,” Joly says. 

“A lot of it. And occasional coke and molly, and a ton of liquor.”

Bossuet and Eponine return together, then, tray of drinks in hand.

“We've decided we're not going to do drugs the rest of the time we're in L.A.,” Musichetta says.

“That's a good idea,” Bossuet says. “We can switch to weed.”

“No, weed counts,” Musichetta says.

Bossuet groans, but privately, Grantaire is pretty sure she's right.

“I'm so fucking glad we're gonna be out of this shithole soon,” Eponine says. “God, New York can be bleak, but at least it's not L.A.”

“We are a decidedly east coast band,” Bossuet agrees. “R, you want to go out for a cigarette?”

Grantaire follows him out of the bar, and they smoke in companionable semi-silence half-hidden beneath their sunglasses and baseball hats (Mets for Bossuet, who has a passing interest in the sport; Dodgers for Grantaire, who doesn't) until Bossuet says, “You've seemed a little off lately.”

“Is this an intervention?” Grantaire says. “Because I'm pretty sure Musichetta just had one for the whole band, and I agreed, and we're not doing any drugs that aren't prescription for a while.”

“Admirable deflection,” Bossuet says. “But you know that's not what I'm talking about.”

For a split second, Grantaire is tempted to tell him everything. He's known Bossuet forever, since middle school marching band in a shitty tristate suburb of New York. They're not as close now as they were once, Grantaire supposes, but then, Bossuet has a boyfriend and a girlfriend to keep track of, and Grantaire spends most of his time partying and moping over Enjolras.

“I just wanted to make sure you're doing okay,” Bossuet says. 

“I am,” Grantaire says. “A lot better. Eponine mentioned—I mean, I know I wasn't great during the North America tour, but I'm better medicated now and South America was—invigorating, you might say.”

“Since we've been back in the States, you've barely talked to anyone.”

“I've just been talking to everyone,” Grantaire says, puzzled.

“But when we're at home I mean. All of us will be watching a movie or grilling food or something, and you'll be in your room with the door locked.” Bossuet is looking out ahead of him, passing his cigarette through his fingers absent-mindedly, an old trick he picked up when they were sixteen and smoking for the first time. It conjures up memories of their high school, the dumpsters they smoked behind, Bossuet's first fake ID, the 7/11 that didn't card. “That's not—I mean, it's not like you. You like to be in the thick of it, you know? I'm just. I haven't talked to the others about this or anything. I just want to make sure you're—not relapsing. Or hanging out in your room doing coke alone.”

“I'm not,” Grantaire says. “I'm—to be honest, I'm usually Facetiming with,” he considers his words carefully, “the guys in Sank Amy. Bahorel, sometimes Jehan.”

“Enjolras?”

Grantaire smiles despite himself, and Bossuet takes one look at him and laughs. 

“You're a lost cause,” he says, but he says it fondly, squeezing Grantaire's shoulder before stealing Grantaire's cigarette and putting it out in an ash tray. “Come on. We need to finish our last drinks.”

“Not ever,” Grantaire says. “Just for like—until we leave L.A.” Bossuet raises an eyebrow, but Grantaire isn't having that. “Right? We can't not drink wine in Europe. We—right?”

“I guess we'll see,” Bossuet says silkily, and then disappears inside the bar. 

Grantaire stares after him for a moment more before following.

*

They all skip partying that night, retreating to the massive beach house they've rented and going to bed early. Grantaire Skypes with Enjolras, who is so busy he barely has time to breathe, let alone talk to Grantaire.

“I'm so sick of the media bullshit,” Enjolras says between interviews before remembering himself. “I mean—I know it's necessary, of course I do. The media is immensely powerful, and to have a voice in it is to influence the world.”

“But,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras looks as tired as Grantaire feels, dark circles under his eyes, even his blond hair—unstyled, curly for once—limper than usual. It doesn't take away from—maybe even enhances—that hunger he has, that look in his eyes like he's ravenous. Combined with his harried appearance, it makes him look wild. “But,” Enjolras says. “I don't want to give any more fucking soundbites.”

“What are Enjolrasian soundbites?” Grantaire says. 

“God,” Enjolras says. “Don't make me. You look terrible, by the way.”

“You look worse.”

He knows why Enjolras looks so ravenous: it's impossible to see whether Sank Amy are having an influence at all, and he's desperate for the revolution, even if it's tiny, and Grantaire is sure that something as small as high voter turnout this November would help Enjolras. For a moment Grantaire envies social change, the object of Enjolras's hunger, but the feeling is so ridiculous that even he can't indulge it. Still. It would be nice, Grantaire thinks, if Enjolras wanted him that way.

“How much have you been sleeping?”

Oddly, the question warms Grantaire from the inside out. Maybe he doesn't need desperate hunger. Maybe he just needs loving concern. He laughs. “Miss you too.”

Enjolras smiles at him, his private smile, not his audience smile. “I love you. I can't wait to see you.”

“I can't believe you're,” Grantaire says, and then stops. He smiles back because he can't make himself not. “I love you too. See you soon. Get some rest.”

“Only if you do,” Enjolras says, and hangs up.

*

  
  


*

After their album release party, Sank Amy engage in a series of interviews before being escorted to a roped-off nightclub for an afterparty whose guest list includes everyone from Zayn Malik to Paris Hilton. Enjolras makes a half-hearted excuse for Grantaire's presence and Cosette, bless her, tells everyone it's synergy or cross-promotion or something.

“This is really exclusive shit,” Grantaire says, returning from the bathroom, where—Enjolras suspects—he was probably doing coke with someone like Mick Jagger. “I've never been to a party like this before.”

Enjolras takes another sip of his beer. He doesn't usually drink much, but he feels uncomfortable enough that he's three beers in and starting to feel woozy. He doesn't know why their album release feels so—underwhelming. Maybe Combeferre's right and it's just tour fatigue, but it just feels like they've put out so much music, played so many shows to so many thousands of people (it must be approaching the millions now, Enjolras thinks, and does some quick mental math but still isn't sure if they've crossed the line or not), and instead of changing, the world has trucked on carelessly. He just feels drained, tired, and without anything to show for it other than a padded bank account and a permanently damaged sleep cycle.

He's only still at this party at all because he's with Grantaire and Grantaire loves parties, especially parties with a degree of newness and strangeness to them, and Grantaire's band is big but it's not Sank Amy big, so when Grantaire looks around at the star-studded club, Enjolras has to smile even if he wishes they were at his apartment or out for dinner somewhere or even seeing live music that neither of them had anything to do with creating.

“Hey,” Grantaire says suddenly, looking around at Enjolras. For once, he's not grinding his teeth or rubbing his nose distractedly, but his fingers still tap incessantly against Enjolras's knee.

“What?”

“You don't look like you're having fun at _all_.”

“I don't really like clubs,” Enjolras says.

“Yeah, no shit, but you could at least try to enjoy tonight. I mean, your album has already sold—what? Two hundred thousand copies?”

“Two hundred fifty,” Enjolras admits.

Grantaire raises an eyebrow. “Okay,” he says. 

“It's fine,” Enjolras says. “An hour or so more, then we can go home, and—”

“No, you deserve to celebrate. Whatever that means for you.” He looks around: the other members of Sank Amy are otherwise occupied. “I'll take you out.”

“Grantaire—”

“No, we're not just going to your apartment and watching C-SPAN reruns while you shout yourself hoarse. I'm not doing that again. I'm in Chicago for one night, and we're going to have fun.”

“You don't even know Chicago that well,” Enjolras says helplessly as Grantaire loops an arm through his and leads him to the back exit.

But being out of the club is freeing nonetheless, and Enjolras feels like he can breathe again, looking up at the Chicago summer sky. It's perfect outside, the ideal blend of warm and breezy, and Enjolras feels infinitely grateful that he's not inside the stuffy club anymore.

Grantaire leads him through back alleys and winding roads, one hand wound around Enjolras's, and they're still private about this, about their relationship, but being together in public is thrilling and delightful nonetheless. They duck out of sight when people who might know them show up, but for the most part they half-sprint around the city hand-in-hand.

“How do you know your way around?” Enjolras asks breathlessly when they're pressed into a narrow alleyway between two buildings waiting for a group of college students to pass by them.

“I'm good with navigation,” Grantaire says, equally breathless, and then they're off again, half-running, light summer breeze in their hair, and Enjolras feels, for the first time that night, the revel, the triumph, like he's won something instead of just putting out an album, exhilarated instead of just empty. 

They stop, eventually, in front of a bar with a gleaming blue storefront and a red velvet interior.

“Have you been here before?” Enjolras says.

“I've heard good things.”

“It's not a club or anything?”

“No,” Grantaire says, pushing open the doors and making his way straight toward the bar. 

Enjolras notices it at the exact moment that Grantaire says it: “Piano bar.” Grantaire flags down a bartender and unwinds his fingers from Enjolras's. “Come on. Play me some Billy Joel.”

“I don't know any Billy Joel.”

Grantaire snorts. “Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Do you want me to play you some?”

“No. I've heard you play piano. It's not very celebratory.”

Both Grantaire and the bartender who's shown up to attend them laugh at this. 

“What can I get you guys?”

“Two Jameson and gingers,” Grantaire says. “You'll love this,” he tells Enjolras when they arrive. “Good combo. Still tastes like alcohol, but not—astringent.”

And Enjolras does like it, surprisingly, takes his first burning sip of it and looks back at Grantaire.

“It's not bad,” he says.

“That's what I thought. So: piano man?”

“You want me to sing a Sank Amy song for this crowd?” Enjolras looks around: they're surrounded by middle aged couples out on a date for the first time in ages, stylish executives still in their work suits, people much too old to know or care much about what the people singing the songs their kids are listening to look like. But if he starts to sing a song they know, they might recognize him, and then the jig is up.

“Of course I don't,” Grantaire says, and the eyeroll is in his voice even if he doesn't actually execute it. “I meant the song. I want you to play piano without trying to start a revolution.”

His fingers brush against Enjolras's, and the moment suddenly feels charged, like it's about more than just Enjolras and a piano, and it's like before they were together, all that tension, every time Enjolras wanted Grantaire to shut up and kiss him or keep talking and kiss him or—

“Okay,” Enjolras says. “Because you got me drunk, and because you didn't guilt me for hating that party. I will play piano without trying to start a revolution.”

Grantaire actually smiles at that, wide and helpless, and the dim lighting of the bar almost casts his face in soft focus. For a moment, he looks surreally beautiful, more like a painting than a person, and Enjolras wants to freeze time and snap a photograph before Grantaire shifts and the lighting changes. He fumbles with his phone for a moment—“Wait, don't move at all, just stay put”—and gets the shot, and Grantaire's face becomes a little more puzzled, and Enjolras takes a picture of that too.

“Sorry,” Enjolras says. “It's just—we only have one night.”

Grantaire inhales sharply, and Enjolras wants so badly to kiss him that it's difficult to think of anything else. He sits down at the piano to resist this urge, and, almost despite himself, starts to play.

It's been ages, probably years, since Enjolras played piano without intent. He's not sure if he's ever really done it—first he played piano because his parents made him, and then he didn't play piano for a long time, and then he played piano to make music that he hoped would change the world.

Now, he goes with his instincts, years of classical piano training returning to him like riding a bicycle. He plays something recognizable, improvises it into something more interesting, switches to an obscure piece his mother liked, accidentally plays the first few chords of “L. E. F.,” ignores Grantaire's delighted laughter, ignores the onlookers, ignores everything other than his fingers and the keys and the sounds coming out of them. He plays for what feels like hours but what must be only minutes, and, half-drunk off the beer and the Jameson and music and Grantaire and life in general, he finishes off with the melody for “Miami Baby” for Grantaire's sake, and when he stops, people clap, and there are fewer than a hundred people in the room but it still feels, for some reason, better than the twenty thousand who cheered them on earlier that night.

“That was amazing,” Grantaire says in his ear when Enjolras sits back down at the bar. Grantaire has a fresh drink ready for him, and Enjolras sips at it slowly. “I thought you said no revolutionary intent.”

“There wasn't any.”

“I guess it'd be hard for you to get rid of all of it.” Grantaire's fingers are warm at Enjolras's hip, and his left knee bobs incessantly. Enjolras takes a chance and looks at him, and he feels suddenly sure, for the first time since they met, that if he asked Grantaire to join him, Grantaire would. “You played my song.”

“I played your song.”

Grantaire grins at him, that dazzling smile, those lovely crinkling eyes, and Enjolras thinks—so briefly that it barely even counts as a thought, much less an actual hope or desire—that it would be wonderful if they could just stay like this, the two of them, Chicago, anonymity, forever.

*

Grantaire flies to New York late the next day, to an apartment that Cosette keeps telling him “absolutely does not befit your status as someone who literally has a bodyguard follow him around, Grantaire, so please do me a favor and don't renew your fucking lease.”

“Where am I supposed to _live_ , though, Cosette?” Grantaire says the next day, stretched out in his admittedly ancient bed and staring up at his admittedly disgusting ceiling. He is thinking about Enjolras. He is always thinking about Enjolras. There's a mark on his neck still, bruises along his hipbones, both from Enjolras pressing into him desperately the morning before. He thinks about his own fingers leaving marks on Enjolras's skin and has to close his eyes briefly to get the thought out of his head.

“I will find you a new place,” Cosette says. “By the time you get back from Europe, you'll have a gorgeous apartment. Pick a neighborhood.”

“I like it in Bushwick,” Grantaire says.

“You want to gentrify?” Cosette says. “You got it. I'll get you the second or third nicest apartment in Bushwick.”

“It doesn't have to be that nice.”

“Just trendy and hip?”

“Exactly.”

It strikes Grantaire that nearly every important conversation he's had in the last few years has taken place over the phone. Notable exceptions: the first time he and Enjolras admitted they were attracted to each other. The time Eponine asked him if he wanted to start a band. Stars Records approaching them with a contract. 

“Okay,” Cosette says. “I'll find you something.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Los Angeles.”

“With Sank Amy?”

“Yeah.”

“How are they?”

“You mean how's Enjolras?”

“No,” Grantaire says. “How are—all of them. Jehan. Courfeyrac. Marius.”

“Do you even remember the names of the other members?”

“Of course I do. We toured with them for like, almost a year.”

“Okay. Give me one more member, and I'll tell you what Enjolras is wearing today.”

“Combeferre.”

Cosette snorts. “You tricked me!”

“So what's he wearing? How tight are his jeans?”

“Does Enjolras know about your crush on him?”

Grantaire actually laughs. “You promised me an answer.”

“Very tight,” Cosette says. “And he's wearing, like, suede boots. In Los Angeles. In _August_.”

“What a mess,” Grantaire says cheerfully. “His stylist must be proud. How are you?”

“I'm terrific,” Cosette says. She sounds it, too, and Grantaire thinks that maybe she's one of those people who always need to be near the ocean or the sun. Vitamin D addicts. “I'll be back in New York next month for the foreseeable future, though, and it might be nice to have some stability.”

“Will you be in Europe at all?”

“I'm planning to meet up with Sank Amy in a couple of cities, but it really depends on work. I need to convince Javert that I can find new clients there even though I'm already overbooked as it is, just with the two of you and your ridiculous PR situations.”

“They're not ridiculous,” Grantaire says. “We're a bunch of great people who sometimes put their feet in their mouths in interviews.”

“You know, when I signed you, I thought you'd be worse than Sank Amy, but some of them are so hilariously bad at hiding how they feel when they're talking to journalists. At least you guys play the game.”

“Anything to make your life easier.”

“That's what I like to hear,” Cosette says. “How's your video?”

“Pretty much done,” Grantaire says. “We have a little more to edit, but then we're technically on vacation for a week, other than press every afternoon.”

“Finally,” Cosette says. “You know you'll have press almost every day in Europe, right?”

“Used to it by now,” Grantaire says. “I live for chat shows.”

“You're doing Graham Norton,” Cosette says. “I can't wait til he embarrasses you.”

“Are Sank Amy going on before or after us?”

“After.”

“I'll make sure he embarrasses you, too, then,” Grantaire says.

“I'm not going to be there.”

“Is Marius?”

Cosette is silent for a moment, and then he hears her frantically typing.

“Not anymore,” she says. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing,” Grantaire says. “Low key night in. Some Netflix. A glass of wine.” Facetiming with Enjolras. “Sardonic Colon are trying to party less, so we're avoiding clubs for now.”

“I wholeheartedly approve,” Cosette says. “Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

“Grantaire?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it. Have fun. Get some rest. Europe's coming up soon.”

“Thanks. I will.”

“See you soon.”

“Yeah.”

*

  
  


bigger: [i](https://i.imgur.com/kVRe8mp.jpg) [ii](https://i.imgur.com/EFcvh1n.jpg)

*

Enjolras has never really liked Los Angeles. There's a lazy, depressive sort of sprawl to it, like Prozac personified, and it bores him in a way New York's energy (more manic depressive, and hopped up on enough caffeine to force away the latter) and the anger Chicago keeps trapped barely beneath its surface do not. L.A. forces him into that eternal battle between the disdain for all new money signifiers that he's been trying to systematically eliminate since he was fourteen and read Fanon for the first time and the real dislike he has for everything about it, from economic disparity (half the city dying of thirst while the other manicures its lawns) to the burning of fossil fuels to the burning of the hot sun on the back of his neck to its lack—temporary or not—of Grantaire.

He gets dragged to an art museum by Jehan on a morning when neither of them have anything scheduled, Jehan insisting that they need “artful recreation time” away from the “capitalistic ideals of the outside world, particularly when one is tasked with the creation of art for the sake of consumption by way of dollar amounts.”

“Is this really going to make us better writers?” Enjolras says, looking at a painting that looks more like a phone conversation doodle to him than anything else. “Looking at yellow and red squares?”

“I can't believe you spent all that time practically sharing a bed with Grantaire and you've still got no taste for aestheticism,” Jehan says. He has been tapping things into his phone the entire time they've been there, and when Enjolras looked over his shoulder, he found himself suitably impressed. “Besides, those are rectangles.”

“Well, I'm not a mathematician either,” Enjolras says. “To be honest, I think Grantaire thinks I'm a lost cause when it comes to art.”

“Why? Don't tell me when you two are sharing rooms you just talk about how shitty you think his music is.”

“I don't think his music is shitty.” 

Jehan raises his eyebrows at another painting, this one a massive canvas with a white rectangle sandwiched in between two red ones that Enjolras is pretty sure he could do himself given enough paint.

“Are we still on this?” Jehan says. 

“On what?”

“Don't you know?”

“I don't.”

Jehan looks from the painting to Enjolras, a brief glance that makes Enjolras feel defiant despite himself. 

“What things do you like?”

“What?”

“I just want a few examples,” Jehan says. “Two or three. Things that you like.”

Grantaire. His mouth, his fingers, his hair, his smile, his—“ _The Wretched of the Earth._ Omar Barghouti. _Orientalism._ The book, not the thing.”

“You seriously just named three books about imperialism,” Jehan says. “You're making this too easy.”

“ _You're_ making it difficult.”

Jehan glances at Enjolras again, this time from the corner of his eyes, the smallest of smiles to match.

“Isn't that why you like me?” he says. “Mystifying your way-too-obvious riffing on Fanon and Marx?”

“That's not _why_ I like you,” Enjolras says. “It's just why I think you're good at your job.”

“What do you like for reasons other than that you see it as a means to your end?”

“I don't see people as a means to my end,” Enjolras says.

“Don't you?” Jehan says. “Why the popular band, then?”

“What?”

“Aren't the fans a means to your end?”

“It's not _my_ end. It's everyone's end—we're the means to our own liberation. Don't get Kantian on me, Jehan.” Enjolras reads the blurb next to a painting that is literally just a canvas painted white. “This is real life. There is no categorical imperative.”

“Name one thing, then,” Jehan says. “I love you, Enjolras, but you have to admit—other than people, there isn't much you like that you don't only like as a method of increasing overall liberation and/or sparking a revolution.”

“It's not like that,” Enjolras says. “I don't have _time_ for things that aren't—I can recognize that their music is catchy, and they're all excellent performers. What more can I—”

“You don't have time for them,” Jehan says. “It's a wonder Grantaire hasn't killed you. Or at least violently protested sharing a room with you. But then, maybe that's why he stayed out so late every night.”

Enjolras is sure Jehan doesn't know anything about his relationship with Grantaire, but this stings anyway. Jehan believes in the cause as much as anybody, but unlike the rest of Sank Amy, Jehan didn't already care about it the first time they met. Enjolras had to convince him that liberation mattered, and then Jehan showed him how liberation could be won through art. It's why Enjolras thinks these conversations help ground him, but this hits too close to home while still being far off mark, and Enjolras runs a hand through his hair.

“That's why you like me, though,” Enjolras says. “I'm a means to an end, too.”

“You inspire people.”

“See?”

“That's not why I like you. It's why I think you're good at your job.”

“So there _is_ a difference,” Enjolras says, triumphant.

“Of course there is.”

Enjolras isn't sure what that means, so he frowns, looking at the painting in front of him again. “Are we done here?” he says. “I don't feel inspired.”

“I wanted to show you a specific exhibit,” Jehan says. “It's called 'Between Art and Politics: Hans Richter's Germany.'”

“Let me guess,” Enjolras says. “A resistance movement during World War II.”

“No. Most of the pieces are from World War I, actually.”

“I already know art can be political,” Enjolras says, letting Jehan drag him by the wrist to another room. “What's the point?”

“I just thought you'd like to _see_ it,” Jehan says, exasperated. “You're—you know.”

“You're right,” Enjolras says immediately, recognizing that he's started to grate on Jehan's nerves, recognizing why. “I'm sorry. I'm tired.”

“We're all tired,” Jehan reminds him gently. “That's not an excuse.”

“You're right,” Enjolras says. “I really am sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Jehan says, grabbing his hand and leading him to the exhibition space.

In the end, Enjolras does find himself enjoying it, almost despite himself. Jehan looks pleased, and Enjolras feels lighter than he has since their arrival on the west coast.

They stop in the gift shop on their way out, and he picks up one of the cipher keys for Marius and a book of postcards for Combeferre, who writes home to his parents from most of their tour stops.

“See?” Jehan says. “This is why you should listen to me more often.”

“I'll take that into consideration.”

Jehan laughs and tosses Enjolras his keys. “You drive. I want to mess with the radio.”

Enjolras does drive, and Jehan fiddles with the radio before settling on a station playing reggaeton, rapping his knuckles against the glovebox to the beat. 

Enjolras, who hasn't driven in over a year, finds that he feels good in the driver's seat nonetheless, and despite the traffic, decides that this trip has been much better than expected.

*

  
  


  
[bigger](https://i.imgur.com/mKyAqpQ.jpg)  


*

Sardonic Colon spend most of their time in New York recording demos for Stars, who've asked to see a few songs they plan to put on their next album.

Grantaire, who has spent the last few weeks trying to disguise love songs as something a little less transparent, is sort of embarrassed to present what he has to Joly, who looks it over with a critical eye.

“This is different,” is all he says, but it's Joly, and when he comes up with a melody, it sounds amazing nonetheless.

“I love recording with you,” Grantaire tells him as they're leaving the studio at the end of a long day.

“We have a song,” Joly says. “Or, well, we have lyrics and a melody, sort of.”

“I guess we'll need Eponine in to do some drums tomorrow.”

“I was thinking—what if we had you just do background vocals in the chorus? I think Musichetta's voice would make this song more interesting.”

“The higher notes?”

“Exactly. And—”

“Then we can make my guitar a little more—”

“—right, if you're not paying attention to the singing, then—”

“—yeah, that sounds like a good plan. So we should work on this one some more tomorrow before we fly out?”

“Yeah, when the rest of the band are in with us,” Joly says. “You want to grab a burrito?”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.”

*

When it's time for them to fly to Europe, Enjolras is glad for it. He is restless, eager to get back on the road, starving for some time spent meeting people and spreading the message in person. Press is good, he knows, press broadcasts all that they want broadcast, but nothing compares to seeing people face to face. Enjolras knows himself, knows his fans, knows what they look like when he's in front of them with his arms thrown up in the air or a gavel in his hand.

“It has to be this,” Feuilly says.

He's brought lunch to Enjolras's hotel room an hour before they're supposed to check out. Because it's Feuilly, it's just enough food for the two of them, but because it's Feuilly, the food is actually good, not the type of thing Enjolras would normally think to get for himself. It's more than just lean protein and vegetables and whole grains, which means it's beyond Enjolras, who cares little for food. 

But it tastes good. He can't deny that.

“If we don't do it with this album, if we don't at least _start_ it, then how can we call ourselves successes?”

“No, I agree,” Enjolras says. “I mean—having a lot of fans is great, but if they don't help change the world, what's the point?”

“Fame might not have been the answer. I keep getting asked if I want my apartment photographed. My agent's having a field day.”

“I wasn't even aware you had an apartment.”

“It's in Philly,” Feuilly says. “I haven't been there in, like, almost a year. So what the magazine editors who want pictures of it are expecting to see, I have no idea.”

“Posters of Mao,” Enjolras says.

Feuilly laughs. “Just, like, the Palestinian flag everywhere. Pictures of Mossadegh and Chavez.”

“You think they're trying to just get readers to see how hashtag-radical Sank Amy's drummer is?”

“It's not far from what my apartment actually _does_ look like,” Feuilly says, and then sighs. “I just wish they'd cover us actually talking about shit.”

“My new strategy is just to only answer questions about politics.”

“But you tried that in _Vanity Fair_ and that writer just talked about how hot you are.”

“It's distracting, isn't it? I thought it was an advantage, and of course it _has_ helped, but now it's just—” Enjolras waves a hand in the air, annoyed at his own impotence. “Maybe if the writer hadn't been so concerned with my appearance, they would've actually focused on what I had to say.”

“They printed some of it. That whole thing about world peace.”

“They only liked that because it made me sound like an asshole.”

“You _are_ an asshole.”

“Yeah, but I made good points,” Enjolras says. “I wish they'd printed the stuff I said about the Black Lives Matter movement, but.” He puts down his fork. “I just don't feel like we're getting anywhere.”

“I know,” Feuilly says. “And it's been years.”

“And the world is still horrible.”

“What do we do?”

“Keep going, I guess.”

A knock at the door. Courfeyrac, already in his travel clothes, suitcase trailing behind him.

“We need to go,” he says. “You two look mopey. Talking about how Polis needs to save the world?”

“Yes,” Feuilly says without irony.

“Ignoring any progress we've made so far?” Courfeyrac says, one eyebrow raised so slightly it might be a tic. “Pretending our _literal millions_ of fans don't have an effect on the world?”

“They haven't, yet,” Feuilly says. 

“Give it some time. This is an election year in the U.S. We can't change the world over night, right? It takes time.” Courfeyrac squeezes Enjolras's shoulder. “We can't get discouraged, or we'll fuck up, or we won't be as good, and if we're not as good, we won't be good enough to do it.”

“To do what?” Enjolras says. He knows the answer, but he feels like he needs Courfeyrac to say it.

“To fight for freedom. For everyone,” Courfeyrac says, and Enjolras, feeling some of the tension relax away at last, smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was writing this chapter I realized I've been picturing Enjolras as [James from Liberty's Kids](http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/libertykids/images/e/e6/Pillow_Attack.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20120116185621) this whole time. I don't even…
> 
> I really have to apologize for spending so long on this. I'm telling you guys, when you aren't an artist, anything involving art takes forever. I'm a comparatively very fast writer, so hopefully the next bit will be out much faster than this one. Also, the soundcloud link unfortunately has a few (still good!) remixes, so stick with the apple music one if you can.
> 
> Anyway: please leave a comment! Let me know if you spot typos, especially in the graphics. Also, come talk to me on my [fandom tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com), which I'm trying to start updating again & is mostly full of Hamilton stuff right now, or ask me for my totally vanilla #aesthetic main blog, where mostly I post pictures of hands and Anne Carson quotes.
> 
> Some credits: “I am a soldier” is a misquoting of the Odyssey that Donna Tartt for some reason calls a quote from the Iliad in the Secret History. Two of the songs off “Polis” are almost direct quotes from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. “Zoon politikon” is a reference to Aristotle's Politics, as is “Polis.”


	3. europe, pt. 1

They land in an airport in Europe that smells like every other airport in the world, and they're transported immediately to a tour bus that hurtles them an hour away to a concert venue, and then there are six hours til soundcheck, and Sardonic Colon spend all of them asleep.

The Sardonic Colon roadies are the same ones that toured with them in North and South America, and their bus is bigger than Sardonic Colon's, jammed as it is with instruments and people. 

“We have all the luxuries here,” Mathieu the guitar tech says, showing Grantaire the two bathrooms, the tiny shower. “It's like an Emirates airplane.”

“I'd rather be on an actual airplane,” Grantaire tells him, and accepts when Mathieu offers to smoke him out.

Their first day in Europe passes mostly in jetlag, and Grantaire barely registers that they're playing a show in god knows what city until he's halfway through, shouting something about Tories that elicits raucous cheers, and then he remembers: Reading. They're in Reading. 

Fifty thousand English kids are watching them play and singing along, and Sardonic Colon are on top of the world.

*

Sank Amy arrive in Europe in a torrent of jetlag, buses, instruments, techs, roadies, and press, fans crowding the airport in Belarus.

“I didn't know we even had fans here,” Bahorel says, burying his head in Feuilly's scarf, but Courfeyrac beams as the fans attempt English, and Marius says something in what might be Russian or Belarusian, and the kids cheer—and they _are_ kids mostly, which is why Jehan is lingering behind them and why Combeferre has taken it upon himself to lead them all to their car even as Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Marius get bogged down signing autographs and handing out hugs and taking pictures.

“Obviously we have fans here,” Feuilly says. “Otherwise Stars wouldn't have ever agreed to it. It's too dangerous.” 

But his eyes glint when they meet Enjolras's over Bahorel's head, and Feuilly's small smile is triumphant.

*

After their show in London, a car deposits Sardonic Colon at a nightclub for an afterparty that befits their newfound status as an opening act. They're supposed to meet their openers, Patron-Minette, tonight, a prospect at which Grantaire is already wary: Patron-Minette's fans were markedly more aggressive than their own at the show that evening, and the ones who didn't just leave after Patron-Minette finished tried to start a mosh pit that got much more violent than the usual Sardonic Colon mosh pit, elbows and fists flying everywhere.

“Don't worry, they're not that bad,” says Eponine, who knows them and apparently every other band in the world. “Montparnasse and I used to hook up.”

“Their music is good,” Joly says. “I guess.”

He, Bossuet, and Musichetta immediately go off to find a table, but Eponine and Grantaire linger, watching the crowd.

“This is weird, isn't it?” Grantaire says. “Like—the people here are serious music industry people. It's not, like, Cosette and a couple of guitar techs.”

“Don't think about it too much. You want to get a drink?”

“I want some blow to be honest.”

“I thought you were lightening up.”

“I am. Every other day.”

“You're telling me you didn't do coke before Reading?”

“I haven't bought any yet,” Grantaire says.

Eponine rolls her eyes. “You're hopeless,” she says. “I mean, to be honest, our opening act is probably in the bathroom right now doing lines. You want to—”

“Yes,” Grantaire says, and they make their way through the crowd to the men's room.

Eponine is right: the area near the sink is crowded with four men, all of whom straighten up and look over when Eponine opens the door.

“Ponine,” one of them says, and Grantaire blinks at him: he's the kind of gorgeous that would've been irresistible to Grantaire before Enjolras, razor sharp cheekbones, dark hair combed up into a pompadour that is admittedly very unpunk, mean curl to his very red mouth, outfit more elaborate than any Grantaire has ever worn—leather and studs everywhere despite how oddly delicate it looks. “How've you been?” Accent mostly English, the slightest trace of French beneath it in his “o” sounds. 

“This is Montparnasse,” Eponine says, needlessly. “This is Grantaire, our frontman.”

“Hi,” Grantaire says. “Mind sharing?”

One of the other Patron-Minette members, whose face is so pale and bloodless it looks almost like the moon, bleached blond hair shaved into a kind of wannabe mohawk and massive gauges making him look an odd combination of punk and hip, smiles at Grantaire. “Not at all. Your treat next time. I'm Claquesous, by the way.” He cuts Grantaire a line while Eponine makes conversation with the other three, then, hand at Grantaire's elbow, says, “Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” Grantaire says, bending slightly to get to it. It his him immediately, purer than anything he's had since at least Colombia, blinding, warm. “This is really good stuff.”

“Yeah, Babet knows people.” Claquesous's eyes are cocaine-dilated too, and he has a good smile, Grantaire thinks, despite the oddness of his face. “Let's get out of this bathroom—do you like to dance?”

They all trickle out of the bathroom, and Grantaire feels great, like he actually does want to dance, but also, for the first time since they found out who their openers were, like he wants to get to know them.

“Tell me more about your band,” Grantaire says. “You guys seem really cool. I like the haircut, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Claquesous says, tugging at one of Grantaire's own curls. “I like yours, too.” 

He points out the members of his band as they distribute themselves throughout the club. “That's Babet—” tall, skinnier than anyone Grantaire's ever seen, with a much spikier mohawk than Claquesous, “used to be a dentist, actually, that's why he's so much older than the rest of us—but he's a real cocaine addict, you see, spends all his money on it, but at least he only gets the good stuff, yeah? We subsidize his habit. Works out well for us all.”

“He's a dentist?” Grantaire says. “What's he doing here with you? He's a little old for the whole punk thing, isn't he?”

“He has a family somewhere, probably … we all sort of think he left them on a trip to Greece and disappeared forever.” Claquesous steers Grantaire toward another man, this one laughably huge, tattoos climbing up his neck from beneath his shirt. “That's Gueulemer. He's a friendly fellow, I suppose, but not the sharpest tack in the box, so we've made him the bassist. He can hardly play, to tell you the truth—only knows about two chords.”

Grantaire can feel himself vibrating from the coke. “Why couldn't you find a real bassist? They're like a dime a dozen, you know, everyone plays the bass in high school marching band in the U.S., all the cool kids anyway, the only type you'd ever want in a band at all let alone a punk one, you know.”

“Well,” Claquesous says, “it isn't like we _knew_ we were going to be popular. The band only started as a sort of—distraction.” 

He doesn't elaborate, and Grantaire aims himself at the bar, gets a drink for both himself and Claquesous.

“Aren't you going to tell me about _your_ band?” Claquesous says. “Unless—d'you want another bump?”

“Yes,” Grantaire says immediately, and Claquesous doesn't bother with the bathroom this time, lines up on a nearby table. 

“Together?” Claquesous says, and Grantaire grins, bends, and accepts the rolled up ten pound note Claquesous hands him.

*

When Enjolras wakes up, he has no idea where he is.

He blinks up at the darkness above him, and it takes him a moment to recognize that his bed is moving. A moment later, he realizes it isn't a bed, it's a bunk, and he's on a bus somewhere in Eastern Europe, a part of the continent Stars tried to prevent their touring. 

“There's no point,” Javert told them during a conference call with Cosette, months ago, when they were still in Chicago planning this tour before South America even started. “There aren't any big venues in Eastern Europe except for soccer stadiums, and Sank Amy aren't well established there.”

“We will be,” Courfeyrac said. “We can do some marketing there, right, Cosette? And make our stuff available on their Spotify. If we do slightly smaller shows—maybe we can do, like, bigger nightclubs? Or outdoor stuff—maybe there are smaller stadiums we could use.”

In the end, Javert relented, and now they're rolling through a particularly hilly patch of what must be Romania, having avoided going further east due to Javert's desire to not start a war with Russia. Enjolras argued that point, too, and even told Javert that Sank Amy should play in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but was met with little sympathy. In return, though, Javert agreed to let them do shows in parts of the Middle East he'd previously sworn off, though they're going to be assigned enough guards to protect the entire Cabinet.

Enjolras picks up his phone: it's four in the morning, and his bandmates are all asleep. Grantaire probably isn't up, either, unless he hasn't gone to sleep yet (is it six or seven in the UK? Enjolras can't remember how the time zones work this early, off this little sleep).

He can feel it, that odd ache he gets in the back of his skull that means he isn't going to get much more sleep, and so Enjolras rolls off the bunk and makes his way to the front lounge.

There's a text from Grantaire, from several hours ago: _have u ever played reading & leeds? still so weird to think ppl not only are coming to see us but that we're practically headlining. few more days in the uk & then fucking off to paris. weirdly v excited even though we're traveling by tour bus the whole time? text me when you wake up. miss you._

Enjolras sits down on the couch and opens his laptop. It's been weeks since he updated his blog, but he has time now, no Grantaire to distract him, no sleep to be had, no album to record, and so he writes: _our duty as citizens: why sank amy exist_.

He stops, pinches the bridge of his nose, presses his eyes closed. They're still sticky and dry from sleep, and despite the feeling that he isn't going to fall asleep any time soon, Enjolras wants to go back to bed.

He texts Grantaire back: _no they bottle bubblegum boy bands like us & i'm too delicate to get covered in piss. send me lots of snaps from paris it's my favorite despite the imperialist implications of literally everything. but i won't get started on that until you're around—i know you like to hear my arguments in person. love you._

A moment later: _your arguments are much easier to tear apart via text because every incorrect point is laid out in front of me. why the fuck are you up right now_

Enjolras wonders why his face feels odd, and then he realizes, feeling rather stupid for the belatedness of it, that it's because he's smiling, ridiculously, at his phone.

He calls Grantaire, who answers immediately.

“Why are you still up?” Grantaire says.

“I'm not still up, I'm up again. Why are _you_ still up.”

“I just left a party,” Grantaire says. He has that post-party tiredness to his voice, too, the comedown from cocaine voice, the “I'm going to feel like shit when I wake up” voice. “We met the Patron-Minette guys. They're pretty nice, actually.”

“Really?” Enjolras says, looking them up. Of the four of them, the frontman is the best looking, at least from what Enjolras can tell—one of them is wearing a mask in nearly every picture. “You're not going to fall in love with their frontman, are you?” 

“Was that a hint of jealousy?” Grantaire says. 

“I mean, it is a habit of yours.”

“Is the great Apollo himself _jealous_?”

“Only that they get to be with you while I'm on the opposite side of the continent.”

“That's sweet,” Grantaire says. His voice is sort of muffled, like he's talking to Enjolras while lying down. “Have you met your openers?”

“We just have DJs every night, no openers,” Enjolras says. “It's kind of nice, actually. No drama to deal with.”

“Just wait,” Grantaire says. “You'll be sick of each other before you get to Poland.”

Enjolras smiles, stretches out on his couch, checks his social media. 

“Some of the kids commenting on my instagram are terrifying,” he says. “I'm talking, like, fourteen year olds calling me their precious son.”

“Yeah, I get that too,” Grantaire says. “And also like twenty-four year olds calling me daddy. Like, honey, I'm not sure that's even physically possible.”

“Being called daddy isn't your thing?”

“Decidedly not.” 

A picture of Grantaire shows up on Enjolras's feed, and Enjolras smiles despite himself until he notices the context: a nightclub, obviously, Grantaire's cheeks flushed and some guy's arm thrown around his neck. If Enjolras squints, he's sure he can make out white flecks on the tip of the guy's nose. He's turned a little, gazing at Grantaire, and Enjolras knows that look.

The caption: _claquesous unmasked! love you london x_

“Who's Claquesous?” Enjolras says.

“Patron-Minette drummer,” Grantaire says, half-yawning. “I really like him, actually. Shared drugs with me. Good ones too.”

“And that's all it takes for someone to gain your favor.”

“Well, you've never shared drugs with me.” A little biting. “You actually _are_ jealous.”

“Decidedly not.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says. “That's good.” Another yawn.

“You should go to sleep,” Enjolras says.

“Okay, Mom.”

“Hilarious.”

“You know me.” But then he yawns again, and then he laughs. “Okay, you're right. I'm going to go get in my bunk and go to sleep.”

“Great plan.”

“I'm full of them.”

“Sure you are. Good night.”

“Night.”

“I love you,” Enjolras says, but Grantaire has already hung up.

*

They have two shows in Paris, which means Sardonic Colon get to spend some time touristing around the next day, and they're still on good terms with each other ( _for now_ , Grantaire forces himself not to think), so they do it together, sneaking off the bus before their bodyguard can catch them and trying to figure out a map of the Paris metro.

“What does everyone want to see?” Musichetta says.

“The Louvre,” Grantaire says, predictably. “There's a forty Euro museum pass we can get and that takes care of most of the museums in Paris. That's pretty much all I care about.”

“Well, we have—” Musichetta checks her watch. “Eight hours til pre-show. How many museums do you think you can fit in?”

“A lot,” Grantaire says.

“I kind of want to see the Arc de Triomphe,” Bossuet says. “And the Bastille.”

“Okay, so I think the Bastille is pretty close to the Louvre—like a mile tops—and then the Arc de Triomphe is a hike, but there might be stops along the way.” Musichetta frowns at the map. “Should we just—figure it out?”

“Yeah, fuck it,” Eponine says, cigarette tucked between her teeth. With her look of disdain and almost Mediterranean coloring, she looks like she belongs here. “Who speaks French?”

“Me,” says Grantaire. “Pray for us all.”

“I do too,” Joly says.

“Even worse,” Eponine says. “Okay. Shall we—try?”

“We're smart, strong adults,” Musichetta says. “We've successfully navigated _Boston_. We'll be fine.”

*

They find themselves hopelessly lost several hours later, having visited the Louvre and the Bastille but somehow detoured on their way to the Arc de Triomphe in an effort to get lunch.

“God bless cheese,” Joly says. “God bless wine.”

It's gorgeous in Paris, and despite being lost, Grantaire feels oddly content, half a bottle of cheap but delicious red wine in his system, stomach heavy with fresh bread and cheese that would absolutely be illegal in the U.S. It's absurd, how comfortable they all are in Paris, and they post pictures of the Bastille on Instagram to thousands of likes and comments and even a few people having genuine discussions about the French Revolution. Next to them, Musichetta and Eponine are curled up together napping while Joly stares up at the sky.

“Sad, isn't it?” Joly says. “All those people died for nothing.” 

“Why do you say that?” Bossuet says, tearing himself a chunk of baguette. “Montesquieu came out of the French Revolution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man. That isn't failure.”

“But they replaced a decadent monarchy with the man who literally destroyed Egypt and conquered a giant chunk of the world. They traded decadence for brutal empire.”

“How's your Ottoman history?” Bossuet says. “Some people think that empire would've fallen anyway.”

“Maybe don't assume I don't know anything about the Ottomans?” Joly snaps, causing Eponine to shift slightly in her sleep. “But maybe Egyptians could've taken over Egypt instead of that fucked up combination of the French and the British? Like, imagine if France had never gone to Africa in the eighteenth century, right?” Joly reaches over and plucks Bossuet's cigarette from between his fingertips, slips it into his mouth, takes a long drag even though he almost never smokes. “Maybe the entire post-colonial mess that is the Middle East since World War I never happens.”

“It ended feudalism, though,” Bossuet says. “Paved the way for a Republic.”

“Did it?” Grantaire says, stretched out next to him. “The French Revolution wanted to promote liberté égalité fraternité—but has that happened? France is notorious for racist nationalism and antisemitism. It tore apart parts of Africa and now calls people who left those parts criminals and rapists and—what?”

Bossuet and Joly are staring at him. 

“What?”

“You just—sounded like someone else,” Joly says, frowning. “Since when do you care about France's oppression of brown people?”

“Am I not a brown people? One currently in France, no less?”

There's a rustle to Grantaire's left, and Eponine's eyes pop open immediately.

A moment later, Montparnasse emerges from behind the leaves and Eponine sits up, shaking hair out of her face. Beside her, Musichetta shifts awake, too.

“Did you follow us?” Eponine says, looking hilariously unconcerned for someone who's just realized she's been tailed by a potentially homicidal pompadoured punk. 

“No. Claquesous guessed what your location might be.” He turns down the cigarette Grantaire offers him, making a face. “Wrinkle sticks? No thank you.”

Grantaire has almost certainly seen Montparnasse smoking before, so he raises an eyebrow, but Montparnasse ignores it and sits down between Eponine and Joly. 

“You're going to get caught in peak hours and be late for sound check,” Montparnasse says. He trains his eyes on Grantaire, but it's Musichetta who responds.

“We'll be fine,” she says. “We're taking the Metro.”

“Not a car?” Montparnasse's teeth are very white. “Give your bodyguard the slip again?” He looks around deliberately, feigning surprise when Oliver is nowhere to be found. “Isn't that a bit— _dangerous_?” A flash of those white teeth again, still aimed down at Grantaire.

“Are you threatening us?” Grantaire says. Next to him, Bossuet tenses.

“Of course not.” Montparnasse's smile is wide and very clearly cost a lot of money, but it doesn't reach his cold eyes. “I'm only letting you know. Be careful. Paris isn't the safest city in the world.”

He stands again, using Eponine's shoulder for leverage, and then disappears behind a set of trees.

Musichetta rounds on Eponine.

“What the fuck?”

“I don't know,” Eponine says. She looks wholly unconcerned with it all, picking at the already-chipped polish on her nails. “He's weird.” 

“If he's so weird, how did you immediately wake up the second he was like, within ten feet of us?” Joly says.

“He wears strong cologne,” Eponine says.

“We're in _France_.”

She shrugs again.

“Why is Claquesous the only normal one?” Grantaire says. “Like, maybe he belongs in a band that isn't full of psychopaths.”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“The normal part or the psychopath part?” Joly says. 

Eponine considers them. “Both,” she says. “Gueulemer's not really smart enough to do the psychpath thing, and you don't really know Claquesous very well. I mean, hook up with him if you want, but just—be careful. He looks friendly, but he always has knives on him, too. How do you think he gets such good drugs?”

“They're just a punk band,” Bossuet says, finishing off Joly's wine and standing up. “How bad could it be?”

“They're not just a punk band.” Eponine runs a hand through her hair. “I mean, I don't think they still do any of this, but—they used to use their band as a front for doing all kinds of illegal shit. That's actually how I met them.”

“Are you saying your dad—”

“Yeah.” She lights a cigarette and picks up their empty cups to discard in a nearby trash can. “I mean, Babet used to write phony prescriptions, so they could sell pretty much anything a dentist could get. Montparnasse has been a dealer for as long as I've known him. Gueulemer and Claquesous were into even more shady shit.”

“Well,” Musichetta says, gathering the rest of their things and patting her pockets for her metro pass, “everyone has to make a living, right? So they were shady before. Now they're a popular punk band with genuine edge. That doesn't mean they're bad people.”

“They aren't,” Eponine says. “But they're not good people, either. They're not—they're not trying to be friends with us just for fun.” She glances over at Grantaire. “That's not what Montparnasse is like. If he's socializing, it's because he wants something, and if Claquesous wants to hook up with you and you want to do it too, then do it—but be careful. Montparnasse is loyal and dangerous.”

“Claquesous doesn't want to hook up with me,” Grantaire says, leading the way to the nearest metro stop. “He's just friendly.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don't you think I would know?”

Joly snorts. “No, dude, you definitely wouldn't. In North America, literally everyone was sure Enjolras wanted to jump your bones for at least six weeks, and you were hilariously oblivious.”

Grantaire's breath catches in his throat. “That's different,” he says. “Claquesous is _normal_. Enjolras probably couldn't tell someone he wanted to hook up with them if his life depended on it.”

“I've been telling you he's _not_ normal,” Eponine says. “The punk band was a front for all the shady shit they used to do, and I have no idea how legit they are now.”

“What, Stars doesn't know about this?”

“Apparently not.”

“What kind of shady shit?” Joly says.

The ghost of a smile floats over Eponine's face. “I don't know exactly. Drugs. Stolen cars. I used to hear rumors about my dad working with a hitman around the same time as Montparnasse started showing up around our place, but I dragged Gavroche out of there the second I could and it's not like I was around when the big decisions were getting made.”

Grantaire remembers Eponine's brother, how he was a constant presence for so long, and then how Eponine put him in boarding school the second she could afford it. He's in high school now, currently spending a summer in Germany, and from his social media, Grantaire guesses he's loving it. It must be better than whatever shithole the Thenardiers were keeping him in.

“You hooked up with your dad's hitman,” Bossuet says.

“Or his hitman's friend or something,” Eponine says, sounding supremely unconcerned. “They're not evil dudes, like I said—he was totally fine when we were hooking up. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful. The guy has weapons on him, and it's not like you'd know where they were hidden while you took his clothes off.”

“I'm not going to hook up with Claquesous,” Grantaire says.

“Yeah, I would've pegged Montparnasse as closer to your type anyway,” Bossuet says. “You always did have a thing for ridiculously pretty people.”

“Fuck off. I'm not sleeping with any of them.”

“Hey, who would know your taste any better than me?” Bossuet says, grinning. “Remember Jacqueline the literal model in high school? Max in college?”

“How do you get all these attractive people?” Joly says. “I mean, no offense, you're not an ugly guy, but your track record is _absurd_.”

“It's the guitar,” Grantaire says, thinking of how very blue Enjolras's eyes are. He wonders how Musichetta would react if he told her about that. “I just play 'Wonderwall' and all the hotties take off their boxers and/or panties.”

“What happened to all the groupies?” Joly says. “Your sex drive is so low lately that I was wondering if—” but he cuts himself off sharply.

“You spend a lot of time thinking about my sex drive,” Grantaire says, forcing his voice to be as neutral as possible.

“It's just not the same as usual,” Bossuet says. “You have to admit.”

“You're too observant,” Grantaire says. “What if I told you I've noticed a certain three friends of mine also have much lower sex drives all of a sudden? When they were fucking like rabbits not that long ago?”

“You pay too much attention,” Bossuet says, rolling his eyes.

“Don't dish what you can't take.”

Eponine snorts. “You're such an asshole.”

“Montparnasse was right,” Musichetta says, pushing herself up and brushing grass off her front. “We're going to be late if we don't get going.”

*

It's quiet all the time as the Sank Amy bus barrels through southeastern Europe (a stop in Sofia, down to Athens, skipping Turkey until they double back through the Middle East—they traded Jerusalem for Moscow, and Feuilly insists it was worth it), and though half of them are insomniacs, all of them are suitably drugged up for their nightly drives up the continent.

Enjolras, whose prescription has not been updated since college, is very much not. 

He rolls out of bed too early, curls up in the tour bus's lounge, tucks himself on a couch and makes sure the door to the bunks is closed so he can watch a movie or read a book or something in peace.

But his phone rings instead, distracting Enjolras from his iPad, and Enjolras only blinks down at it once before answering.

“Hello?”

“I love molly,” Grantaire says. He sounds like it, too, louder than usual, all the edge gone from his voice. “I never do it because it's just so intense for me, it really hits me, you know? It makes me like the ultimate social butterfly, and have I ever told you I _love_ butterflies? But I never do it but I love it.”

“Hi,” Enjolras says, smiling into the darkness and climbing off his bunk to hide out in the lounge. “You never do molly, but…?”

“Claquesous gave me some,” Grantaire says. “He's so friendly, Enjolras, he's been so great. The rest of Patron-Minette are kind of creepy and Eponine says they're like hitmen and drug dealer or whatever but he seems like a really good guy, I think you would probably hate him. One time Joly brought up politics and he laughed and said the world is dog eat dog and it's every man for himself.”

“He sounds terrific.”

“You'd hate him,” Grantaire says happily. “Anyway, I'm calling you because I was dancing with a lot of people at a club and all I could think was how much I wanted someone to touch me, and then I realized that it wasn't really about someone, it was about you.”

Enjolras goes still. “Really?”

“Yes,” Grantaire says. “And you need to please stop with these short sentences, because I just keep thinking about your voice, and every time you talk I swear I can hear it in every one of my nerves, my god Enjolras, you have to try molly. It's like all your senses are times a thousand. Once I got a blow job after taking some and nothing has ever compared to that except for of course every moment spent with you.” Some of his edge is back, a dry laugh, and Enjolras looks up at the ceiling and smiles helplessly.

“Claquesous gave it to you?”

“Yes,” Grantaire says. “Can you talk? Is it okay if I jack off while you talk?”

“Are we really going to do this?”

“Yes, if you want to. Tell me about your day. Tell me anything. I just want to hear your voice.”

Enjolras's own cock twitches lazily at that, and he thinks that his ego is going to be a real problem for him.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say whatever comes to mind.”

“I can recite the preamble to the Constitution.”

Grantaire gives a breathy laugh. “I'm already hard,” he says, but it sounds like a joke. “Wait, I—” A moment's pause, then: “Fuck, sorry, I'm about to get kicked out of the bathroom. I love you. Rain check. I'll think about you in the shower. Love you.”

“Love you,” Enjolras says.

*

_i just watched 1776. seems like a realistic representation of gridlock in Congress tbh._

Grantaire grins at the text, pushing his hair out of his eyes and ignoring the dull thumping in his head from yet another consecutive hangover.

_you WOULD be super into 1776. just don't listen to hamilton. you'll forget how much you hate capitalism & fall in love w him_

_if you stand for nothing r what do you fall for?_

_hilarious._

_see everyone says i'm humorless but i have my moments_

Grantaire laughs, thinking about the expression Enjolras would make while saying this: perplexed at his own ability to be funny, no irony anywhere except in the arch of one of his eyebrows. Grantaire feels a pang at the image, closes his eyes briefly, wishes Enjolras were next to him instead of—what—several hundred miles away? What's the distance between Athens and—where are they? Lisbon? Bern? He looks outside, but it's still too dark to make out the landscape well enough to take a guess. 

_who says you're humorless?_

_magazine interviewers_

_yeah you did come off as a dick in your vanity fair interview tbh_

_i KNOW. i thought i was being savvy but i fucked up lol…also he fucked up and called feuilly moroccan lol??_

_also like you got super uncomfortable when he started asking you about your relationship status_

_well we're still keeping things private_ , Enjolras replies, and Grantaire forces himself to ignore the rumbling in his stomach. _you know i don't like to share_

 _that makes you sound so much more possessive + creepy than you are_ , Grantaire says.

_you'd be surprised._

_prove it tbh_

_;)_

Grantaire stares at the emoticon, wondering if it's the first one Enjolras has ever sent him, and then his phone vibrates again: _have to go meet a polish radio host. this is going to be fun i guess considering not one of us speaks a word of polish? wish us luck_

_hahahahah good luck_

_love you_

_yours yours yours <3_

*

Enjolras can feel his world shrinking.

They did some sightseeing in Greece, but now their bus is barreling its way back north, Sank Amy are doing so much press that Enjolras can hardly close his eyes without seeing the inside of a radio studio. They're close enough to the coast in Albania that some of his bandmates go to the beach, but Enjolras opts to stay near the bus, reading, writing music, feeling jealous of everyone that gets to spend time with Grantaire every day. 

Mostly they're on the bus anyway, extra bodyguards because—Feuilly loudly complains whenever any Stars exec is within earshot—Stars is racist.

“It's not like Sarajevo is more dangerous than—fucking—Los Angeles,” Feuilly says once, noting the massive escort Stars have sent along. 

Enjolras relays this to Grantaire, who laughs and tells him to make sure he sees some of the architecture.

“Seriously, some of the most gorgeous places in the world are in Eastern Europe and no one ever takes advantage,” Grantaire says. “Tell me you're not going to hole up in your bus in Budapest, too. If you're going to save the world, don't you at least want to see it?”

And so, on Grantaire's orders, Enjolras does leave the bus in Budapest, but he does so alone, a beanie he stole from Grantaire months ago hiding his hair and giant sunglasses on his face.

It turns out that Grantaire is right. Budapest is beautiful, from the ridiculous building that houses its Parliament (Enjolras thinks of the U.S. Capitol and finds it hilariously ugly in comparison, all that white neoclassical nonsense he only vaguely remembers from a required art history class) to its litany of warm cafes and some of the best coffee he's ever had.

He sends Grantaire a picture of Parliament, and Grantaire responds, _indulge for once in your life_ , so Enjolras buys himself coffee with an egg in it and a soft pastry filled with nuts and poppy seeds. He takes some back to the bus after, and the members of Sank Amy who are still around grin and thank him.

But revitalizing as his day spent wandering a new city alone is, Enjolras still finds himself exhausted all the time. He attributes it to sleeping poorly, posts about how much he likes Budapest on his Twitter, and writes half a song about goulash communism that inspires Jehan to comment, _just what we needed! more songs abt communism. nice art refs this time tho_ on their Google Doc.

At night, Enjolras lies awake, staring at Feuilly's bunk above his until his mind finally gives up and lets him sink into sleep.

*

They're on the metro on their way back to the venue in what might be Brussels or Antwerp but could actually just be Amsterdam when Grantaire, high and tired, spots someone on the train with an umbrella printed with The Return. Grantaire blinks at it in surprise. The umbrella is old and worn, and he hasn't seen an umbrella printed with art this way before, the mass marketing of a masterpiece certainly not new to him—he's received dozens of greeting and postcards with the very same painting on them since “Rene Magritte” leaked almost a year ago—but surprising him in this form anyway.

“Hey,” Grantaire says.

Next to him, an equally high Musichetta shifts. “What are you doing, R?”

The guy with the umbrella looks up. “Yes?” English, blessedly, because Grantaire doesn't speak—whatever they speak in whatever country they're in. “Do you need directions?”

“No, I—your umbrella. I like it.”

On Grantaire's other side, Claquesous sits up, turns toward Grantaire.

“Oh,” the man says. “Thank you.” Dutch accent, Grantaire thinks. A smile. “You know his art?”

“A bit.”

“Magritte was one of the best.”

“I agree,” Grantaire says. “He's one of my favorites.”

“Why?”

“Because—if you didn't know any better, you'd say, who cares, it's just some clouds in the shape of a bird. But that's not just what it is—if it was, what would the point be of 'ceci n'est pas une pipe,' right? It's like Plato's allegory of the cave—the painting of the thing is never thing, so even painting the clouds in the shape of birds, while provoking a certain set of emotions, becomes an act of knowing—more like a clarification of true knowledge than its representation.”

“Grantaire,” Musichetta says. “You're high. You just said 'like' like a thousand times. Shut up.”

“No, keep going,” Claquesous says.

“Ah,” the man with the umbrella says. “You sound like a student.”

“Not in a few years.”

“Art historian? Here to look at what beautiful art we have in Belgium?”

Belgium. They must be in Brussels. Do they even have a stop in Antwerp? “What is there other than Magritte?”

“Umbrellas with his paintings on them,” the man says. “Did you know this is my favorite painting? So I bought it on my umbrella. I did not consider that when it is open, I stand beneath it, so I don't see it—but when it is closed, the painting is distorted.”

“You should've just bought a postcard.”

“And put it on my refrigerator, yes, you're right.” The man laughs. “But this way I always have the painting with me. I go see it whenever I want to at the Magritte museum, and when I cannot do that, I simply look down in my lap and—there it is! Close by me. Even if I cannot see it, I know it's there.”

“So it's a good representation.”

“Not at all. It is like—with the pipe. It isn't the thing.”

“So how does it help?”

“Plato said that all art is counterfeit, that it corrupts the soul,” the man says. “Does it matter?”

That isn't what Plato said, Grantaire thinks, but then he considers the man: “No.”

“That's how it helps. The reminder of the thing is enough.”

Grantaire stares at the man, words turning around in his mind, but the train careens to a halt and the man stands to get off before Grantaire can say anything more. He raises a hand in silent farewell, and beside Grantaire, Musichetta gives a soft snore.

“You're so smart,” Claquesous says.

They have smoked, Grantaire thinks, entirely too much.

*

Great men, Enjolras read once, are always concerned with their legacies, with what they leave behind.

“It's true,” Jehan says, glancing up from the game of chess that a distracted Enjolras is losing very badly. “You know Van Gogh used to yell at his brother for never selling his paintings? He wanted them to sell, he wanted people to see them—and he died thinking he hadn't left a legacy at all.”

Enjolras, who knows nothing about Van Gogh, shrugs. “Well, he was wrong, wasn't he?”

“Yeah, but—what I meant was, maybe if he knew something would live past him, he wouldn't have been so concerned with his own life that he ended it.”

“You think a legacy is the cure to debilitating depression?”

“Not exactly,” Jehan says. “I'm just saying. If you put yourself completely into your work, and you see that your work is valued, doesn't that show you that you too are valued?”

“I suppose.” Enjolras thinks of Polis's sales, the platinum party he skipped, and then, inexplicably, of Grantaire. “I guess I don't look at it that way. I think of people as having inherent value, so if I'm one of them, I have inherent value, too.”

“That's not really the kind of value I mean, though. Let me—okay, so there's this line at the very end of the _Metamorphoses_ where Ovid is like, 'I've finished my work and nothing will ever destroy it, not Jupiter nor fire nor sword nor devouring time,' because time doesn't have power over anything except 'this body of mine,' right?”

Enjolras stares at the chess board. He thinks he can turn their match around if he lets Jehan take his pawn.

“Right.”

“Are you paying attention?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says. “Ovid says his work will outlive him.”

“Not just that, though—the work _is_ him, just as much as his body is. So he claims immortality because of what he's left behind, and what he's left behind is the story of an entire religion.”

“I don't want to claim immortality. I just want to change things.”

“That's still a legacy. And you're still an artist.”

“Not for its own sake, though.”

“Van Gogh's brother thought Van Gogh was only an artist because it helped him with his mental health. Ovid basically says he's only a writer because he wants to live on forever.”

Enjolras looks up at Jehan, who is gazing at him intently. 

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I'm sick of listening to you have this fight with Grantaire and Combeferre and literally every reporter we've ever met. The reason you're making art doesn't matter. The art you make does.”

“Sure,” Enjolras says. “If it incites change.”

“That might not happen until after you're dead,” Jehan says. “What do you do if you're eighty-five and the world is still a mess?”

“You sound like Grantaire.”

“No, because Grantaire doesn't believe the world will ever change. I think it will. And it'll take time, but—the Black Lives Matter movement uses the words of men who died, words that are just as poignant and powerful now as they were when they were first spoken. Would it be so bad if that were your legacy?”

“Are you comparing me to MLK?”

“No. I'm telling you that not everyone changes the world the way they expect to, and if you keep expecting it to change over night, you're going to tear yourself apart.”

“What?”

“This tour has been a mess, but you're not in it alone.” Jehan moves a knight Enjolras somehow missed. “Check.” He stands up, dusts imaginary dirt off his shirt. “Let's assume you pulled some crazy trick and beat me anyway like you usually do, though, okay? I'm bored of this game.”

He disappears into the bunks, and Enjolras stares after him. 

Jehan is wrong. He's not in it alone, but if this is all for nothing, or all for a something that comes thirty or forty years after they die, then—how is he supposed to keep caring? How is this supposed to be worth it? 

If he'd gone to grad school he could've gone into politics and changed things from the inside. He could've gone to law school and represented those in need, could've aimed his sights at the Supreme Court. He could've been a doctor and literally saved lives. 

Instead he's making music, and it's never felt more worthless.

*

Grantaire is smoking behind the bus, earbuds in, sunglasses covering as much of his face as possible, when his phone rings.

“Are you free to talk?” Enjolras says.

“Yeah, what's up?”

“I don't know,” Enjolras says. “I'm just—I don't know, right? Like, if this was going to work, wouldn't it have worked already? Polis has sold _so_ many copies, but elections in Europe get more and more right wing—did you see that huge anti-refugee initiative in the UK? It just feels like everything we're doing is pointless, and it's hard, when you're faced with absolutely no victories, to force yourself to continue to march onward against the current.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says gently. “Slow down. You're stage-voicing me.”

“I _know_ , I'm sorry.” Enjolras exhales. “Sometimes I get away from myself. How are you?”

“Tired,” Grantaire admits. “I love Europe, though. I know it's stupid and cliché, but I love the oldness of all the cities.”

“Which museums have you visited?”

“Almost every one in Paris. You'd hate it.”

“Not if it was with you.”

“No, you'd still hate it.”

“I bet you'd be an interesting tour guide,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire can hear the smile in his voice. It charms him, stupidly, ridiculously, gives him fucking butterflies.

“This doesn't have to be hypothetical, you know,” Grantaire says. “I can take you to a museum when we're back in New York.” 

“I look forward to it. It can be our second ever date in the U.S.”

“Yeah, I forgot, you like basically don't exist in New York for me.”

Enjolras laughs. “God, seriously, just listening to your voice makes me feel so much better.” Then he's quiet for a minute, and then he says, “Sorry, I didn't mean to—” like he's said something wrong.

“No, I—that's totally fine. You make me feel better too. Do you want me to read something to you?”

Another moment of quiet, and then: “What do you have handy?”

“Anything the Internet has to offer.”

“Surprise me.”

“Okay, I have a good one.” It takes him all of twenty seconds to find it on his phone. “The representatives of the French people,” he starts, noting Enjolras's sharp intake of breath, “constituted as a National Assembly, and considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortunes and governmental corruption, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man.”

Enjolras lets out a long exhale. “Really?” 

“Is there a problem?”

“I need to—wait a second, okay, don't—” There's a scramble on the other end, and then a minute later Enjolras is somewhere quieter. 

“Okay,” he says. “I'm in the bathroom at this cafe.”

“What?” Grantaire says. “Why?”

“I—wasn't really decent.”

Grantaire snorts. “No way. That's all it took?”

“Do you—I mean, is it okay if I—”

“I'm happy to help,” Grantaire says.

He continues to read the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and when he gets to “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” Enjolras actually moans into his ear, a sound so filthy that for a moment Grantaire considers getting to a private spot of his own—but to jack off just to this, just to the sound of Enjolras getting himself off, would feel truly depraved.

Still, when Enjolras whimpers at “liberty consists in the ability to do whatever does not harm another,” Grantaire has to stop reading for a full minute and close his eyes.

“I need to move,” Grantaire says. “Can you hold off for a sec?”

“Yes, yeah, absolutely, I yes, yes—”

“Jesus.” Grantaire groans. “You sound like you're getting fucked right now, I—”

“I wish I were,” Enjolras says. “Next time—next time, we have to do this in person, please—I'll suck you off while you read me Foucault, please—”

Grantaire stumbles back onto the bus, trying to hide his erection from any prying eyes, but Eponine is with the roadies, and Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet have claimed the bunks, so he finds relative privacy in the bus's tiny bathroom. He leans against the sink and unbuttons his pants, wraps his free hand around his cock, and slides it down his length slowly. 

“Where was I?” Grantaire says.

“Liberty consists in the ability to do whatever does not harm another; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has—”

“—no other limits than those which assure to other members of society the law does not require,” Grantaire says. “Do you have this memorized?”

“Yes.”

“How close are you?”

“Well—I don't think we're going to get through all seventeen declarations.”

Grantaire laughs breathlessly into his mic, closes his eyes, imagines that Enjolras is there with him. Surprisingly, the declaration on his phone screen does not provide an adequate substitute. “I'm in a bathroom now too, so we're equally disgusting.”

“Don't remind me,” Enjolras says. 

“Sorry,” Grantaire says, but he grins, thinking about Enjolras off in some bumfuck European country's bathroom, trying not to be too loud. “I'll keep reading.”

Enjolras gasps at “Every man being presumed innocent,” and then he comes a moment later, at “all rigor unnecessary to securing his person,” loudly, Grantaire's name delivered in a moan that makes Grantaire close his eyes again, press his forehead against the wall, and buck into his own hand.

“Open your eyes,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire is too distracted by the feeling of his hand and the sound of Enjolras's voice to consider how Enjolras figures out that his eyes are closed. “I'm sending you a picture.”

The snap arrives a moment later, a shot of Enjolras from the neck up, eyes lidded, cheeks flushed, lips parted, head tilted back against a tiled wall.

“Fuck,” Grantaire manages.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras murmurs, a sweet version of his voice that Grantaire has discovered occurs only in the moments after orgasm, “come for me, Grantaire, come on—” 

His coaxing drives Grantaire closer to the edge, and he realizes after he's already done it that he's just whimpered into the phone, and Enjolras says, “Come on, you're almost there, on three—one—two—” A quarter rest, then, “ _three_.”

Grantaire spurts onto his hand and, embarrassingly, onto the wall, and he has to pause before cleaning it up to rest against the sink as his legs wobble.

“Fuck,” he says. “I'm never going to masturbate without you on the phone again.”

Enjolras emits a loud huff that Grantaire interprets as actual laughter. “I agree.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

*

The drive between Brussels and Amsterdam is short enough that Stars lets them all stay in a hotel for the night, which Patron-Minette take as an excuse to trash their hotel room.

“This seems like kind of a shitty thing to do,” Bossuet says mildly, before accepting the joint Gueulemer passes him.

“Stars will pay for it,” Montparnasse says. “Grantaire, d'you have a cigarette?”

Today, he's wearing a close-cut black suit with leather lapels. Grantaire wants to ask him where he gets his clothing, but Claquesous once told him it was a dangerous idea unless he wanted to listen to Montparnasse prattle on about how sample sales rarely catered to men and the best time of day to steal from high-end retailers.

“I thought you didn't smoke wrinkle sticks.”

“We all have our moments of weakness.” Montparnasse holds his hand out, and when Grantaire surrenders his pack, Montparnasse disappears onto the balcony with the entire thing.

“You've probably lost those for the evening,” Claquesous says. “I've heard you're terrible at piano. Fancy playing me some?”

“No, I'm really bad,” Grantaire says. “I've been told my piano is actually laughable by someone who is very careful to never laugh at me.”

“Who's that, then?”

Grantaire grins. “A friend of mine.”

“Sounds like a prick to me.”

“Oh, he is.” 

Claquesous hands Grantaire a guitar. “Play something else, then.”

“Not alone.”

“Here, I'll turn my knees into bongos, and Gueulemer can shake a tambourine or something.” He taps out a simple beat on his knees.

“Let's do it,” Joly says. “Sardonic Minette jam sesh? That's my kind of night.”

He takes over the keyboard Grantaire is ignoring and plays a few notes before Grantaire joins in. 

They play for close to an hour, Claquesous complicating the beat by slapping Grantaire's thigh in addition to his own, Musichetta joining them to sing while Bossuet and Gueulemer cheer them on. Babet is, as usual, nowhere to be found, but Montparnasse watches all of them from by the balcony, making his way through most of Grantaire's pack of cigarettes.

It almost feels normal, or close to it, and for the first time all tour Grantaire doesn't find himself wishing they were still touring with Sank Amy until close to dawn, when the sky is lightening and they're supposed to be packing up to head to Germany.

“Eponine, you don't look great, why don't you crash here?” Gueulemer says, and Bossuet backs away so quickly that Grantaire doesn't realize what's happened until he sees Eponine dig her elbow into Gueulemer's gut.

“What the fuck, dude,” Bossuet says flatly.

“Didn't mean anything by it.” Grantaire has hardly heard Gueulemer talk since they met, but he notices now that unlike his bandmates, Gueulemer's accent is almost American. “Sorry, 'Ponine—just a joke.”

“Not a very funny one, evidently,” Montparnasse says. This late, the French in his accent is exaggerated, but other than that he gives no hint that he's been up all night. Grantaire wonders just how much cocaine and nicotine are helping to prop up that image. “I'm off to bed. Gueulemer, come with me.”

Gueulemer, eyes still tearing up from Eponine's sharp elbow, follows obediently. Eponine stands up. 

“Grantaire,” she says, and he hands Claquesous the guitar.

“Good night, man,” Grantaire says, and thinks about how little he used to notice things like this before. It was such a simple comment, but going from a group of people that would never so much as glance down at Eponine or Musichetta's cleavage to one that would openly—and vaguely threateningly—hit on Eponine is jarring nonetheless.

“Sank Amy changed us,” Bossuet says quietly once they're all in the hallway.

“For the better, I think,” Musichetta says dryly. “You three were never that bad, but at least now you're more inclined to ditch the people who are.”

Bossuet winces at this, but he wraps an arm around Musichetta's shoulders and lets her lead him and Joly to their hotel room.

“Can you take a long shower?” Eponine says. “I know it's late, but I want to talk about how much I hate being hit on, especially when I'm fucked up and exhausted.”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says, unlocking the door to their room. “You know, you could talk to me about it.”

Eponine blinks at her phone. “You're right,” she says. “Does Bratislava have the same time as Amsterdam?”

“Either way he's probably asleep.”

“Okay,” Eponine says, sitting down next to Grantaire on his bed and resting her head on his shoulder. “I'm just really tired. And I really miss him. And all I can think about when we're with those four assholes is how much I miss all of Sank Amy—not just Combeferre, but the rest of them too. Courfeyrac and Jehan, Bahorel, Feuilly, Enjolras, even Marius. They're so much more low key—and don't get me wrong, I love partying every night, but sometimes I just want to have a beer and talk about politics with Enjolras, or, like, dance with a guy friend who I know won't try to feel me up.”

Grantaire opens his mouth to agree with her, thinks about his agreement with Enjolras to keep this whole thing between them, and reconsiders. “Not to mention one with no ties to your creepy dad.”

It's a testament to how tired Eponine actually is that she only laughs at this. “Fuck off,” she mumbles. “Don't you miss them too?”

“More than you can imagine.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” Eponine straightens. “If you're not going to shower first, I am.” She lets Grantaire hug her in an uncharacteristic fit of affection, then disappears into the bathroom.

*

Enjolras can't stop smiling at half the texts he gets, even though most of the time Grantaire hasn't even said anything funny. It's disquieting, he thinks, how much he lives for these little moments, silly thoughts that cross Grantaire's mind, pictures of him in random parts of Europe doing semi-dangerous things, like precariously balancing between two train cars in Paris or smoking something suspicious-looking in Amsterdam.

They were together all the time in South America, together so often that even Sank Amy—who are sure Enjolras dislikes Grantaire, except for Courfeyrac who is still convinced Enjolras has wanted to sleep with Grantaire since he met him and actually isn't really wrong—found it odd. But despite all that closeness, that togetherness, Enjolras is sure they hardly ever actually _talked_. Grantaire came in late and they fucked, or they sat together in companionable silence working, or Grantaire smoked on a hotel balcony while Enjolras tried to glean any information he could from local news despite not speaking much Spanish or Portuguese, or they huddled close and watched a movie on one of their laptops, kissing all the while.

Now, with all their physical contact disintegrated, there's nothing they can do _but_ talk, and Enjolras loves it. He finds himself hopelessly charmed as Grantaire takes apart his arguments, pleased every time Grantaire texts him back an _omg hahahahahaha who knew u had a sense of humor,_ warm and fond with every selfie, further in love with every late night phone call: “Hello?” “Yeah—I missed you.” “Missed you too.” “Going to bed now?” “Yeah.” “Good luck sleeping.” Laughter. “You too.” “It's late.” “I know.” “I love you.” “I love you too.” “Good night.” “Good night.” Minutes spent in silence listening to each other breathing. Once or twice—when they had hotel nights—falling asleep like that, more often one or both of them retreating to their bunks to finish the phone call in silence. 

There aren't many things Grantaire cares about, Enjolras thinks. He still has lingering hope that one day Grantaire will care about their cause as much as Sank Amy do, but for now, there is a tiny, tiny set of things Grantaire considers worth his time: his friends; his art; his fans; and, now, Enjolras. 

Counting himself among those things makes Enjolras feel undeniably privileged, and he wonders when he started believing it could be possible to feel that way about another person, to consider yourself not only one of their interests but one of their few priorities. 

Either way, it means he's absolutely helpless when it comes to Grantaire. Despite ever fiber of his intellect rebelling against it, Enjolras has no tools for this, no method with which to unwind his sense of self from Grantaire, to force himself to care (as he once did) steadfastly and solely for those actions which might lead to worldwide revolution, to the dethroning of oligarchs, to—ultimately, though Enjolras accepts that this part, at least, might not happen until after his death—freedom and equality for everyone. 

He feels wrecked, broken almost, except that it doesn't hurt—but maybe that's just because he feels like he's floating half the time and forcing himself to pay ruthless attention to the task at hand the other half. 

All of which is why every single Instagram post featuring Claquesous and Patron-Minette wreaks havoc on Enjolras's mind.

*

When they first started Sardonic Colon, the sexual tension between Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta was palpable and irritating, one of the major contributors to their arguments during that first tour—Joly and Bossuet, already together for years, found themselves infatuated with Musichetta, and for a while it was always, always tense when any of them were around.

But then they got their shit together and started seeing each other in a triad or whatever, and for the most part, it's all been smooth sailing since then.

Until now.

The fight starts slow and small, Bossuet sneezing into his hand instead of the crook of his elbow and then not immediately grabbing the Purel.

Joly immediately freaks out: “We're on _tour_ , I'm not trying to be sick while we're stuck in the middle of fucking Europe thousands of miles away from my doctor—fuck, my throat already feels scratchy, fuck—”

This results in an argument—“I get that you have an anxiety issue, but you can't attack me for a simple mistake, and anyway your doctor said you'd be better off if you allowed for some exposure therapy—”

And then Musichetta attempts to mediate: “Both of you need to apologize to each other.”

“Maybe _you_ need to stop telling us what to do _all the fucking time_.”

And from there, it blows up, four years' worth of resentments and angers coming out in one explosive fight in the bunk area. It's different from the tension between all of them when they toured North America: that was a result of too much closeness between five people; but this is a personal fight, possibly due to a lack of effective conflict resolution between the three of them, possibly also due to proximity, possibly just due to this specific cocktail of sleeplessness and stress and minor respiratory infection.

“This is fucking horrifying,” Eponine says as they listen to yet another mess of passive aggressive comments between Bossuet and Joly coming from the bunks while Musichetta sits across them in the lounge, watching a movie and ignoring her surroundings.

“You know, I did want to take a nap,” Grantaire says. “But I think we should probably go out.”

“Should we take her?” Eponine asks, indicating Musichetta with her chin.

“Yeah, I mean—the better separated they are, the happier everyone will be, right?”

“We have a hotel night in Prague in a few days,” Eponine says, pinching her nose with the tips of her index finger and thumb. Her black nail polish has started to chip, making her fingernails look oddly misshapen. “Maybe we should switch it up?”

“I can share with Bossuet and you can share with Musichetta and we can give Joly his own room?”

“I mean, they usually book one single and one double, right? So we just ask for an extra double?”

“What if they argue over who gets the single?”

“They can't,” Eponine says. “We've already made the decision for them.” She reaches over, nudges Musichetta. “Want to go see the sights with us?”

Musichetta takes out an earbud. “ _Yes_. Please.”

They wander the streets of Munich aimlessly, stopping for beers and sausages, and Musichetta checks her phone constantly despite a complete lack of indications that she has any notifications. 

“I'm just so tired of this,” she says for what must be the twentieth time while they're all eating soup from a tiny stand on a side street. “And it's so impossible for us to actually do anything about it because we don't have enough space to like, get away and collect our thoughts.” 

“But it's not, like, a cataclysmic fight,” Eponine says. “It's only a stupid argument, right? Couples have them all the time.”

“Yeah, but most relationships can spend a night away from each other or even just in separate _rooms_ to get it together. They don't have to spend every waking moment together—but I live with Joly and Bossuet, and I work with them, and all my friends are also their friends, so ...”

“No, I get it,” Grantaire says, sipping at his beer. He thinks about what would happen if he and Enjolras lived and worked together, and while he loves Enjolras and wishes he could spend every waking moment with him, he knows it would only accelerate the demise of their relationship. Eventually, arguing would get exhausting instead of exhilarating; eventually, they'd resent each other for their disagreements instead of loving one another despite them. “Human people need space. Even from the people they love.”

“It's just such a stupid fight,” Musichetta says. “Like, I know I tell people what to do a lot, but usually that's a good thing, right?” 

Eponine and Grantaire nod in sync, and Musichetta laughs. 

“Thanks,” she says. “But really, I mean, it ends a lot of conflicts before they start, and I don't think pointing out that they were both in the wrong really warranted getting attacked—and it's never happened before so I don't think we should break up over it, but I still feel _awful_.” She sighs. “Whatever. I think we can fit in another round before soundcheck.”

Never one to disagree with requests for more alcohol, Grantaire grins and orders one.

*

It so happens (or Cosette makes it happen, bless her) that they're both in Prague during the same week, and Enjolras makes a special effort to go to the Sardonic Colon show.

He's seen videos of their shows lately, of course, Snapchats from some of their roadies who keep in touch and Instagram posts from Sardonic Colon fans, but he's not seen Sardonic Colon play since they were on tour together, and Enjolras has missed it, missed their intensity, missed the way their fans seem to come to life when they're on stage. Missed Grantaire, swoony, hair grown out, clutching the mic like it's a lifeline. 

“We've been doing this song all tour,” Grantaire is saying now, pulling his guitar off over his head and setting it carefully down near Eponine's drum kit. Fans are already cheering in anticipation, and Enjolras despite himself feels proud of them. Twenty-thousand Czech fans who already know what's coming. “Did you guys know Bossuet is really, really good at mash-ups? Sing along if you know the words. This is Bill Withers, Ain't No Sunshine, meets Steal My Sunshine.”

The way Grantaire croons the words is unlike anything Enjolras has ever heard, painful and deep and hopeful all at once, twisting something within him, and he's supposed to be surprising Grantaire but Enjolras suddenly wants him to look up and catch his eye—the song is about him, Enjolras knows, and he wants Grantaire to stop singing like he's missing a limb, a pain so clear that even Musichetta singing “Steal My Sunshine” in the background can't make mitigate it.

Enjolras has never seen a showman like Grantaire. Grantaire doesn't just sing: he flirts with the audience. Enjolras read a review once that said Grantaire is the type of frontman who looks like he's making love to the music, which is a stupid way to phrase what Grantaire actually does, which is wrap himself around the mic stand, shake his hips and hop around and grope himself and look up and smile that crooked smile of his, bump up against Musichetta and share her mic or bounce across the stage to Joly and, out of breath, shout, “This is Joly, and he is the best fucking guitarist in the world!” and then slide down onto his knees with his lips almost brushing the mic to sing “Miami Baby” like it's a ballad instead of a dance song—Enjolras has seen him do it both ways, but he prefers it ballad-style, singing about cocaine and the beach and partying like they've broken his heart instead of reinvigorating him the way the lyrics suggest. And it doesn't hurt that Grantaire is genuinely talented, a decent rapper and an amazing singer despite or maybe because of the smoking, that throaty growl when he holds a note for a long time, those lidded eyes, half-smile—

Enjolras stands and watches from the balcony of the theater with his sunglasses on and his hair tucked into one of the beanies Grantaire left on the Sank Amy bus months ago, trying not to split his own face in two from smiling so hard.

*

No one answers his knocking, so Enjolras lets himself into Grantaire's hotel room (Eponine provided him with a key, not even bothering to comment on the undoubtedly strange—to her—occurrence of Enjolras asking for the key to Grantaire's hotel room, so preoccupied was she with seeing Combeferre). The shower is running and the room dark and gorgeous and European beyond the massive windows.

“Ep?” Grantaire calls from the bathroom. “That you? Do you still want to grab a drink later?” 

He doesn't expect it, but it hits Enjolras immediately, a sharpness in his gut that forces his heart and breathing to speed up. He inhales, four, holds it, seven, exhales, eight, repeats as Grantaire continues to talk.

“There's this place in Wenceslas Square—I know, I know, but it's supposedly like a hidden gem in the basement of a surprisingly good kebab shack that's open super late? One of the fans told me before the show. We can let the triplets fight it out here, right? And we can just ignore the fact that the Sank Amy boys would kill to be there?”

The shower stops. “Or we could try this other place—apparently you can only get to it via bicycle. I haven't been on a bike since like 2009, but fuck it, I guess you never forget or whatever. I think we can rent them in the lobby.”

Somehow, Grantaire's continued rambling lets Enjolras refocus, stops the onslaught of panic, and when Grantaire emerges from the shower in only a towel and actually drops his dirty clothes in shock, Enjolras smiles helplessly.

It's just—it's so _good_ to see him again. If you'd asked Enjolras before a year ago whether he ever wanted to be in love, he would've said love of freedom was enough for him, but this—this is something else, gut-wrenching, this lack of control—he spent so long carefully repressing those human needs that distracted him from his end goal, but he feels now completely helpless to them, and that feeling has only grown in Grantaire's absence.

He has a new tattoo, coordinates scrawled over his collarbone, and he's growing out his facial hair, which Enjolras knew because of Skype but somehow didn't visualize until now, the roughness of it, the texture. He's thinner and paler than he was when they last saw each other, early European fall versus L.A. mid-summer, but he's beautiful nonetheless, damp hair swept away from his face for once, that smile, laugh lines already collecting at the corners of his eyes.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, and that seems to be enough to break Grantaire out of his reverie, because at this he lunges forward, knots a hand in Enjolras's hair, and, finally, kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! I chopped this chapter in half because it was getting close to 20k words and the entire fic thus far is only 21k words, so expect part 2 in about two weeks (I'll be out of town til then so even though I'm nearly done I won't have a chance to clean it up at all).
> 
> Also, idk how this happened, but somehow this fic has reached 150 pages, and I feel like I have about 30% more to write? Life is wild & I am verbose.
> 
> Credits: Grantaire read Enjolras the [Declaration of the Rights of Man](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp). Jehan was talking about the epilogue of the [_Metamorphoses_](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D15%3Acard%3D745) (see the very last stanza). “Yours yours yours” is a song John & Abigail Adams sing to each other in 1776. “[The Return](http://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-return-1940?utm_source=returned&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=referral)” is a Magritte painting.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed reading (and even if you didn't)! Let me know what you liked/hated/loved/thought was horrible. 
> 
> Come talk to me on my rarely-updated [fandom tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com), or hang out with me on my ~*~*~*~aesthetic~*~*~*~* but vanilla [main blog](http://osaudade.tumblr.com).


	4. europe, pt. 2

Sometimes Grantaire forgets, because it's easy to forget when you're in a long distance relationship with someone, probably easy to forget when you're in a regular relationship with someone too—seeing them every day must lessen the impact—sometimes Grantaire forgets what Enjolras actually looks like. 

Sank Amy fans across the planet have posters of him on the backs of their bedroom doors, have pictures of him set as desktop and phone wallpapers, make gifs of him rolling his eyes or talking passionately during interviews, watch videos of him on YouTube, Vines Courfeyrac puts up of Enjolras bobbing his knee to a Sardonic Colon song. But only the ones who've seen him live know what he's like in real life, and only the ones who've actually met him know about his impact this close up.

Grantaire isn't particularly religious, but sometimes he thinks about the archangel Gabriel visiting the prophet to reveal to him the Qur'an. He wonders if the prophet felt like Grantaire does now, in awe at the beauty and sure that he's hallucinating and maniacally hopeful that he's not and wildly, terribly in love. 

Enjolras has a sort of radiant energy about him. It's stupid and it doesn't make sense, but Courfeyrac compares him to Apollo for a reason. In Grantaire's imagination, Enjolras has a golden glow, but in real life it sinks into his skin, leaving Grantaire aflutter, a mess, reaching for Enjolras to kiss him helplessly.

“I missed you,” Enjolras says. 

“When did you get here?” Grantaire says. “I knew you'd be nearby, but I didn't think—”

“Cosette did it,” Enjolras says, grinning. “I—I think Combeferre asked, and then I seconded it obviously, and everyone looked at me like I was insane, and I thought, oh shit they still don't know, and fuck Grantaire I missed you so much.”

Grantaire steps away, his blood going cold.

“Grantaire?”

“Sorry,” he says. “I—it's getting weird, pretending we're not dating around our friends and stuff? Isn't it?”

Enjolras stares at him, and Grantaire really wishes he hadn't said anything. 

“I mean,” he continues, ignoring the sense of dread pricking at the back of his neck, “I mean—is it so bad for people to know you're dating me? Like—I know I'm not, like, I don't know, Gandhi or whatever, but I'm hardly Hitler am I? Like, it's cool if you don't want the fans to know, like I get not wanting to be out although I think it'd probably be pretty good for Sank Amy if you were out and probably good for your fans too, but even our own bandmates? Like—like we know about all the couples in each other's bands and I think it's ridiculous that we're supposed to be keeping this secret and like, I'm sorry, if you don't want people to know you're dating me than don't date me?”

Enjolras blinks at him, starts to move toward him, thinks the better of it, stays put. “What?”

“I'm sorry.” Grantaire sits down on Bossuet's bed, keenly aware that he's still in just a towel. “I didn't mean to go off the second you got here, but I really missed you and I kept having to lie about it and—I mean, I don't _care_ , it just would've worried my bandmates a lot less if they didn't think my meds had stopped working or something.”

“You think we haven't told people … because I'm _ashamed_ of you?”

“I mean—like—I wouldn't put it like that.”

“You just did.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes, you—” Enjolras stops, and this time he actually does move over to Grantaire, crouching in front of him and placing both hands on Grantaire's knees. They're warm even through the towel, warm and heavy, and Grantaire forces himself not to react. “I don't want to argue, Grantaire, we haven't seen each other in _weeks_ and I really fucking miss you and I love you and I just want to hang out with you, can we just do that?”

Grantaire closes his eyes, heart thrumming in his throat. He wishes he hadn't said anything. He hates the idea that it's going to end like this, because of this stupid argument over nothing, something that doesn't even matter. “Please don't evade the question.”

“I'm not evading the question. I just don't know what the question is. Obviously I'm not ashamed of you. I _love_ you. I didn't even think that was like—whatever, I'm not ashamed of you.”

“You're not.”

“ _No_.”

“Then why have we been keeping this secret?”

“I thought you wanted to,” Enjolras says. “We just wanted it to be our thing. No one else involved. It was more private. It felt more—I don't know. Intimate. I mean, that was at the beginning obviously, when we were still touring together and when it would've been hard to get away from our nosy friends. Eponine and Combeferre waited til after tour ended to do anything at all. And now there are—everywhere we go, there are fans and paps, and I just—I never meant for it to keep going. I thought you _wanted_ to.”

“You're telling me I've been stressed about this for _months_ , and it was just a fucking misunderstanding?”

“I think that's exactly what I'm telling you, yes.”

“Jesus Christ, Enjolras,” Grantaire says, collapsing against the bed in relief. Enjolras's hands are still hot on his knees. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“I'm sorry,” Enjolras says. “I'm—you know—I'm great at talking when it's about—well, anything, really, other than this. I don't really know what I'm doing.”

“We need to get better at communicating.”

Grantaire lies there for so long that he's surprised Enjolras is fit enough to stay squatted like that, but when he peeks up, he sees that Enjolras is staring at him, looking terrified.

“What?”

“Do you still like me?” Enjolras says. 

His voice is small and tired and expectant, and Grantaire sits up in alarm. That those words just came out of that person's mouth shocks him; he's never seen Enjolras betray so much as a modicum of stage fright.

“What?” Grantaire says.

“I've never done this,” Enjolras says, pressing momentarily on Grantaire's knees in order to straighten, then sitting down next to Grantaire and putting his face in his hands. “I don't know how it's supposed to go.”

“You've never done what? Fight?”

“A relationship. With anyone.” Enjolras lies back against the bed, and Grantaire follows him. “I know it's weird. I had a one track mind in high school—Ivy League or bust. And then in college, I just wanted to figure out the best way to change the world. And after that—you know how it is. Touring, I mean. When was I supposed to find the time?”

“You're doing okay,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras smiles, and despite the fact that he's still annoyed, Grantaire feels his heart swell: Enjolras is a creature of single-minded devotion, and this deviation—that is, his apparent affection for Grantaire—is just off-brand enough to make Grantaire think he completely underestimated him. A year ago, he thought Enjolras was hot and annoying. Now, he's both those things but a thousand others too, affectionate and compassionate and irritable and arrogant and a touch snobby, empathetic to a fault, utilitarian even though it pains him to not be able to save everybody—and there's a dose of realism about him, too, not cynicism of course, not Grantaire's brand anyway, but it's that touch of realism among all the ideals that gives Enjolras an edge. That's where the anger comes from, the frustration: the understanding that Enjolras can do everything he can and still might not change the world. But he perseveres in the hope that maybe—just maybe—he can get other people to help. And Grantaire is inexplicably _fond_ of him.

So even though he's still frustrated, Grantaire smiles back at Enjolras, leans toward him to breach the space between them. Enjolras's mouth is soft and inviting, and then moments later it's hungry and desperate, and Grantaire clutches at the hem of Enjolras's shirt even as Enjolras shoves off Grantaire's towel.

“I still like you,” Grantaire breathes against Enjolras's mouth, but instead of responding, Enjolras climbs on top of him.

Kissing Enjolras again after months is the best thing Grantaire can imagine. He's shocked he ever thought phone sex could be enough, because with Enjolras it's not about coming, it's about the touch, the physical contact, the heat, Enjolras's teeth tugging at Grantaire's lip and his hands wrapped so tightly around Grantaire's head that Grantaire feels like he'll explode when Enjolras lets go, and he has a great voice, Enjolras does, but it just doesn't compare to his fingers, his mouth, his—.

“Wait,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras immediately backs off, though he's still straddling Grantaire. 

“What's wrong?” Enjolras says. “Did I—”

“No,” Grantaire says, laughing. “It's—this is Bossuet's bed.”

“Oh.” Enjolras's brow creases for a second, but then he smiles, too, dazzling. “Bossuet's?”

“The triplets are fighting. Eponine and I split them up.”

Enjolras doesn't question it any further, straightens, holds out a hand to pull Grantaire up. “Okay. We should move.”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” Enjolras says, staring at Grantaire like he can't quite believe he's there. His hand squeezes Grantaire's. “I really missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Grantaire says. “A lot.”

*

Enjolras means to tell everyone at brunch the next morning, a Sank Amy-Sardonic Colon reunion that Courfeyrac started to plan as soon as they received news of their extra time in the Czech Republic.

 _it's show & tell, so bring something to show and tell!!!_ Courfeyrac's group text reads. 

“I guess we have something big to show and tell,” Enjolras says.

“Speak for yourself,” Grantaire says, following Enjolras into the restaurant. “I have an umbrella with my favorite painting on it, so—”

The bands are already seated, taking up three tables in the back corner of the restaurant, another table nearby seating four of their bodyguards. Courfeyrac lights up when he sees Enjolras and Grantaire, waves them over frantically as if there's a way for them to miss the giant group of band boys sipping coffee.

“Grantaire!” Courfeyrac says. “How terribly I've missed your most lovely of smiles. Join us, won't you?”

“Missed you too, Courfeyrac,” Grantaire says, smiling that most lovely of smiles.

“You look like you've had a nice reunion already,” Combeferre says. “Bossuet here tells us he walked into your room late last night and found you cuddled up together.”

The entire table turns to look at them expectantly.

“Uh,” Enjolras says. “Aren't we going to play show and tell?”

“Show and tell,” Courfeyrac says. “That most exhilarating of kindergarten institutions. What do you have to show and tell? I nominate … Grantaire to start.”

“Well,” Grantaire says, drawing a sky blue blue umbrella from his bag, “I recently got my hands on an umbrella with my favorite painting on it. You've heard of Sardonic Colon's pop punk hit Rene Magritte, featuring the great Brendon Urie? Well, this is the painting that inspired it—and I have it on an umbrella.”

He looks positively giddy, and Enjolras beams at it. He's not sure he's ever seen Grantaire have quite so much fun sober, but he's so cheerful now that it's hard to imagine last night's argument even happened. 

“Are you serious,” Bahorel says flatly. “That's all you have for us?”

“I think Eponine has a really cool beer bottle from Munich,” Grantaire says. “But yeah, souvenirs aren't really my thing. I just bought this because I thought it was really cool.” 

“Show and tell,” Courfeyrac says again. “Where kindergarteners get to one up each other with their parents' toys. Where we're taught, even from the youngest of ages, to covet our neighbors' stuff. Eponine, since Grantaire's picked you, why don't you go next?”

She does lift a beer bottle, then chooses Combeferre, who blessedly chooses Jehan, who chooses Courfeyrac, who is shameless and points straight at Enjolras.

“Your turn,” he says.

“Okay,” Enjolras says. “Not totally sure how to tell you all this, but Grantaire and I are—we're together.”

There are a few cheers across the table, but Combeferre is frowning slightly, sipping at his coffee. He doesn't meet Enjolras's eyes, which Enjolras supposes is fair—he's never kept a secret from Combeferre for this long before. 

Cosette, though, laughs in delight. “I knew it!”

“Is that why you haven't been sleeping with groupies?” Joly says. “It's been such a big shift this tour to see you showered and on the bus so soon after shows.”

“I haven't slept with a fan since the east coast of the United States,” Grantaire says.

This startles both bands, too.

“But you always had hickeys,” Bahorel says. “I assumed you were sexiling Enjolras—I waited for so long to hear him rant about it, but he never said anything, so I—”

“When did this happen?” Cosette says.

“Who tops?”

“What's Grantaire like in bed?”

“What's _Enjolras_ like in bed?”

“Don't tell me you two had sex while I was in there last night.”

“No,” Grantaire says, “but we did make out in your bed for a while. Sorry.”

They break up into the beer garden in the restaurant's back room eventually, the conversation finally drifting away from Enjolras and Grantaire as people start catching up. Grantaire gets cornered by Courfeyrac, and Combeferre grabs Enjolras's arm before he can follow.

“What?” Enjolras says.

“Are you—sure?” Combeferre says. Behind his glasses, his eyes are narrowed thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—and don't take this the wrong way—you hardly ever do anything without an ulterior motive.”

“You make me sound far more manipulative than I am,” Enjolras says, thinking of what Jehan said to him in L.A.: _What do you like other than what you see as a means to an end?_ He had an answer for Jehan then, but he didn't give it to him.

“Is that inaccurate?”

“Entirely.”

“So you aren't trying to get Sardonic Colon in on—all of this, or soften up your image or something,” Combeferre says. “Because I get it, I want the revolution too, but it'd be sort of shitty to date someone just for that.”

Enjolras stares back at him, hurt. “I'd never do that. It's not like that. I just—I just like him.”

Combeferre looks relieved. “That's what I assumed, but—”

“No, it's not. Everyone keeps telling me what a shitty person I'm supposed to be, and I get it, I know I work too much, I know I care more about changing the world than about music, but it's not—I don't treat _you_ that way, and I don't understand why everyone thinks I do.”

“Enjolras—” 

“If you sucked at music and didn't have any talents to speak of that could be useful in a revolution, you'd still be my friend, because you're not just my friend so that I can use you to—advance my—my fucking goals or whatever.”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre says, and something in his voice is calming enough that Enjolras's shoulders slump forward. “I don't think I'm your friend just to advance your goals. I love you, and I know you love me, and I'm sorry that I even said any of it.”

Enjolras thinks of Grantaire in their bed that morning, his t-shirt's collar so stretched out that it falls, reveals a shoulder blade, skin stretched too tight around bone. Enjolras reached out to brush a freckle there with his thumb and Grantaire turned and smiled and despite that strung look he always has these days, Enjolras couldn't help but think, god, how beautiful before leaning in to kiss him. That had no ulterior motive. He wanted to kiss Grantaire, and he did it. He wanted to love Grantaire, and he did that too.

“I just,” Enjolras says. “I don't know what I did to convince all of my closest friends that I'm so terrible.”

“Well—you _are_ terrible. Not always, but sometimes you're scary. Dude, when you're at home, you literally only eat broccoli and chicken and whole grain toast.”

“It's healthy and it's fuel,” Enjolras says. “Is there a problem?”

“I'm just saying. People think you're cold because you primarily concern yourself with the most efficient means to an end.”

“But I'm not like that with my _friends_.”

Combeferre stares at Enjolras. “You're right,” he says. “You're not. But Grantaire's not just your friend.”

“Can I interrupt?” Grantaire says, showing up with three champagne flutes filled with something orange and handing one each to Combeferre and Enjolras. “Courfeyrac just gave me the 'if you hurt him I'll kill you' speech. I assume Bossuet and Eponine will be here to deal with you shortly.”

“No need,” Enjolras says. “Combeferre just gave it to me.”

“Really?” Grantaire looks at Combeferre, who gives a sheepish shrug. “Didn't realize you cared. Eponine wants you, by the way, so you should probably get over there.”

“Good idea,” Combeferre says, looking relieved for the out and disappearing.

Enjolras looks at Grantaire in silence for a moment, at the bend in his nose, his too-long hair, and then he leans over, seizes Grantaire's chin, and kisses him firmly on the mouth.

“Okay,” Grantaire says. “Not that I'm complaining, but what was that for?”

“Nothing,” Enjolras says. “I just—I really like you.”

“Well,” Grantaire says, smiling surprisingly sweetly. “I really like you too.” He reaches up to pinch Enjolras's cheek and then, in that odd Grantaire way of his, turns on his heel and half-marches away, wagging his hips at Enjolras the entire time.

*

After brunch, Sardonic Colon introduce Sank Amy to Patron-Minette. It's mostly Bossuet and Joly's idea, both of them thinking the idea of the bands meeting each other is—for some reason—hilarious. Grantaire, happy to see Bossuet and Joly agree on something for the first time since at least three countries ago, cheerfully assents.

Now that he sees the two bands interact, though, Grantaire can see their point. He's not sure how he didn't realize it before, but the wary way Babet and his absurd haircut take in the sight of the most ridiculous-looking boyband in recent history drives Grantaire almost to hysterics. 

“Hello,” Claquesous says, ever the most gregarious of the bunch. He extends a hand, introduces himself, makes a joke that Courfeyrac laughs at, and between the two of them, they actually do a passable job of breaking the ice.

Other than their _very_ different tastes in music and Patron-Minette's disregard for anything related to social justice, there isn't much reason for the two bands not to get along. Grantaire isn't even sure why the tension is there until Claquesous comes over to say hello to Enjolras. Enjolras's arm tightens territorially around Grantaire's shoulders, and Grantaire feels himself pressed much closer to Enjolras's side than he was only moments ago.

“Enjolras,” says Enjolras. He doesn't move to shake Claquesous's hand. “I'm Grantaire's—” 

He pauses to look at Grantaire—they haven't really talked about this, about what to call themselves: boyfriends? Partners? Future husbands? As far as Grantaire is concerned, this is it for him—obviously he's never going to find anyone else. And more and more he can see that Enjolras isn't, either, is too caught up in his cause to pay attention to much else. Grantaire isn't sure how he caught Enjolras's eye before, but it seems unlikely to ever matter again. 

“Grantaire's what?” Claquesous says, and it sounds enough like a challenge that Enjolras tenses. 

Grantaire looks up at Claquesous, and finally it clicks: “Dude, I thought we were friends.”

“Did you, mate?” Claquesous says coldly. For the first time since they met, his bloodless face and bleached blond hair actually look intimidating. What was it Eponine said? Shady shit? How shady? “Do your friends regularly give you free drugs?”

They've separated a little from their group, but Montparnasse lingers close by, filing his nails with a metal file that looks altogether too pointed at one end. He's the only one, Grantaire realizes, who hasn't said anything since meeting Sank Amy.

“Yes,” Grantaire says. 

“Don't act stupid,” Claquesous says. “You knew what was going on.”

“Evidently he didn't,” Enjolras says.

“You can't even call him your boyfriend, but you trust that he wasn't—”

“Wasn't what?” Enjolras says. “Leading you on? You sound like a high school football player. _Mate._ ”

“Claquesous—”

“Don't worry,” Claquesous says. “We've still got a month of tour left. That's a month without blondie. I'm sure I can lure Grantaire away for _just_ a bit.”

Next to Grantaire, Enjolras shifts like he's going to hit Claquesous. Grantaire very much doubts Enjolras has ever hit anyone in his life, and he tightens his grip around Enjolras's waist. At the same moment, Montparnasse moves so quickly that Grantaire barely notices it until he's inches away from them, nail file—one edge so sharp it gleams in the sunlight—still in hand.

“Fuck off,” Montparnasse says. 

Enjolras opens his mouth, but Grantaire, who—as Claquesous said—still has a month of this tour to go, shuts him up. 

“I don't owe you anything,” Grantaire says. “I was friendly because I'm friendly. Enjolras, let's move.”

He drags Enjolras onto Sardonic Colon's empty bus, pours him a drink, and waits as the tension seeps out of him.

“What the fuck, Grantaire,” Enjolras says.

“I don't know,” Grantaire says. “I didn't know.”

“How could you not know? _I_ knew.” 

He sounds frustrated, and Grantaire refills both their drinks. Enjolras lifts his glass but doesn't drink from it.

“I don't know. I didn't notice. I'm—”

“Don't apologize,” Enjolras says. Grantaire looks at him: Enjolras is gazing at Grantaire so intently that Grantaire starts to feel self-conscious. “I'm just trying to figure out—so you are always this oblivious?”

“What?”

“This guy hits on you for weeks, and you don't get it. I try to communicate to you for _months_ how I feel about you, and you're still convinced at the end of it all that I hate you. I thought I was just bad at communicating my feelings, but—”

“You _are_ bad at communicating your feelings.”

“But you used to hook up with groupies.”

“Yeah, so?”

“How did you know then, if you never know now?”

Grantaire shrugs. “It's different. Claquesous didn't—he never made a move or anything. He'd just drug me up and we'd dance and then go off to our separate buses.”

“You would dance.”

“Yeah, I mean, I—obviously I wouldn't have, if I'd known, but—”

“We've never danced.”

“What? Of course we have.”

“We haven't. I always just sat in every club we went to until it was polite to leave, or I didn't go at all, and it's not like we've ever been to a concert or something together.”

“Oh,” Grantaire says. “Do you _want_ —”

“Yes. If that's—I just—”

“What, here?” Grantaire looks around: all the furniture in the bus's lounge is bolted to the floor, and they've already checked out of their hotel. 

“We could go on a date,” Enjolras says. “I just—we have to talk about this, obviously, or you should talk about it to your therapist, because it is not normal for you to be _this_ oblivious—like, I would've thought you two were hooking up just from your Instagram posts if I didn't know better—”

“You've been stalking my Instagram?” Despite himself, Grantaire feels charmed by this. “Since when are you into social media?”

“Since my—since _you_ ,” Enjolras admits.

“That's another thing we need to talk about,” Grantaire says. “What the hell are we supposed to call each other?”

“Boyfriend sounds juvenile,” Enjolras says. “And partner sounds off, somehow.”

“Have you been jealous of Claquesous this whole time?”

Enjolras nods. “Not because I thought you—not because I distrusted you. I just wished I was there with you and not him. More envy than jealousy, really.”

“Right,” Grantaire says, trying to understand.

“I love you.”

That's it, isn't it? The thing he has to force himself to believe. 

Enjolras smiles. “Do you want to dance? Boyfriend? Partner?”

“I don't like either,” Grantaire says. “Just call me—”

“Mine?”

“What?”

“Was that too possessive?” Enjolras blinks down at his nails. “Sorry. I—you're your own person, obviously. I just—look, I love you, I know you don't belong to me, but there's still a part of me that thinks of you as—”

Grantaire shuts him up with his mouth. _Mine_. That possessive arm around Grantaire's shoulders, the tension in his body like he wanted to fight Claquesous, it shouldn't be a turn on, it really shouldn't, but that's the assurance Grantaire needs, isn't it—

“You probably shouldn't refer to me as if you _own_ me,” Grantaire says softly, forehead pressed against Enjolras's. 

“My exclusive sex mate for whom I also have deeply entrenched romantic sentiment.”

“That's why you're the lyricist for the most popular band in the world.”

“Co-lyricist.”

Grantaire smiles. “Close enough.”

*

Sank Amy board their bus not long after brunch, and though they linger as much as their driver will let them, eventually all that's left is Sardonic Colon watching a giant bus speed down the street away from them, one or two heads poking out of the window and several more arms waving goodbye.

“You should've told us,” Eponine says, locking arms with Grantaire and resting a head on his shoulder. “Then you being such a recluse when we were in L.A. might've actually made sense.”

“You really should have,” Musichetta says.

“I don't think I've ever seen you keep a secret that well.” Bossuet snags a cigarette from Grantaire's pack. “I mean, in hindsight, I guess we just weren't looking for it? Usually you don't tell us stuff but we can figure it out.”

“But we all thought you hooked up once and got it out of your system,” Musichetta says. “Sank Amy included, I think.”

“Except it was _abundantly_ obvious that you still had a crush on Enjolras.” Joly frowns. “We just thought it was unrequited. I guess we don't know Enjolras that well, so we couldn't really tell—”

“I don't really want to talk about this,” Grantaire says.

Musichetta pushes her sunglasses up so Grantaire can see that she's narrowed her eyes at him. “Well, you've been hiding it for like ten months, so you'll just have to deal with it for a little bit.”

Eponine pinches Grantaire's wrist, silently backing Musichetta up even though she's never been one to pry, and a moment later Grantaire figures out why: it's been hours since Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet snapped at each other. They even sat within a few seats of each other at brunch.

“Let's at least do it over drinks,” Grantaire says, looking down the road as if he can summon Sank Amy back by sheer force of will. “I'll tell you whatever you want, I guess.”

Musichetta steers them to a nearby bar and makes Grantaire spill everything, from what actually happened after that first double date with Courfeyrac and Jehan (“It was fake—it was a way for Courfeyrac to get Jehan on a date with him, which was so dumb, and then Enjolras and I just antagonized each other the whole time—”) to when they got together (“You know that one Dunkin Donuts in Seattle? The one that's not supposed to exist because it's fucking Seattle and why would you ever drink Dunkin Donuts in the coffee capital of America? Yeah, like, right after our album release party—”) to what they talk about (“I don't know. Everything?”).

“Well,” Bossuet says. “Turns out there are some things I don't know about you.”

He grins across the table at Grantaire, and despite himself, Grantaire smiles back.

*

The anti-refugee bill passes in the UK, and Enjolras storms off the stage after their show half a continent away, barely keeping his anger under control.

He pushes the dressing room shower as hot as it'll go and stands under the spray, staring blankly at the wall in front of him, wondering if everyone who's ever tried to change the world has been consistently beaten down like this.

But no—he forces himself to think rationally: they haven't been to the UK yet. Maybe they'll have a more palpable effect when they're actually there, actually singing to actual people. Maybe most of their British fans are too young to vote. Maybe they didn't see his tweet storm, his long post about the history of British colonialism in the Middle East, the notes about imperialism by European nations directly leading to the current refugee crisis. 

They're too young to vote, most of their fans, Enjolras reminds himself. Though their American fans are a little older, the average age of their British fanbase is just over sixteen. He remembers Courfeyrac saying that after an email from the Stars marketing team that had Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Feuilly, and Bahorel teaming up for press targeted at the UK's black and brown population, some of the only press Sank Amy have done as a team without Enjolras. 

British citizens can't vote until they're eighteen. That gives—two years, Enjolras thinks, until they'll know for sure how useless this all has been.

Someone outside the bathroom shouts for the shower, and Enjolras washes his hair quickly, wondering how irritated his stylist will be if he starts growing it out and wearing it curly again. 

By the time he gets out of the shower, Enjolras has suitably calmed down. Whoever knocked earlier is nowhere to be seen, and Enjolras dons a hoodie that he's sure isn't his (a little too short to be something he bought himself, a little too worn to be chosen by his stylist, the faint smell of cigarettes near the collar almost masked by the scent of laundry detergent) and leaves the deserted venue for the bus.

Other than Jehan and Courfeyrac (who are huddled together in the lounge area and barely look up when Enjolras walks in), Sank Amy are already in bed, which makes sense considering they've been doing press nearly every morning. Enjolras has a morning show scheduled for the next day, and he climbs into his own bunk.

They're only one day removed from the brief paradise that was Prague, and Enjolras already feels tense all over again. He buries his face in his pillow and tries to force himself to do his breathing exercises, but instead all he can think of is how monumental of a fuck up this has all been if it doesn't work.

Fuck it, Enjolras thinks. Fuck it fuck it fuck it. If this doesn't work out, he's still young enough that he can go back to school. Law school can be his backup plan. Law school and then—he's ruined any hopes of a career in politics, but maybe he can work on someone's staff. He can influence policy from the background. Or he can be an activist, or a lobbyist. That'd be—it'd be better than nothing.

*

Touring is tense now.

With relations between Musichetta, Bossuet, and Joly still frosty and Patron-Minette as antagonistic as ever, it's nearly impossible to find a peaceful spot anywhere. Sardonic Colon avoid Patron-Minette whenever possible, but there are Stars events nonetheless, press they're supposed to be doing together, moments when they run into each other in their venue.

It's during one of these moments that Grantaire finally sees Claquesous: Sardonic Colon's set has ended, and for once Montparnasse is not shadowing his bandmate. Claquesous still has his mask on, but behind it his eyes are so pale they're almost iridescent. 

“What?” Claquesous says when Grantaire stops mid-stride and opens his mouth. “Here to ask me for some more blow?”

“I don't want blow,” Grantaire says. “I wanted to be your friend because I like making friends. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.”

“You should've told me you were in a relationship.”

“It was—a secret.”

“If it was a secret,” Claquesous says, stepping closer, “then this can be a secret, too.”

“I thought you were just being friendly.”

Claquesous gets closer still. Grantaire refuses to back down, but he tightens his crossed arms against his chest. 

“Claquesous,” Grantaire says. “I didn't realize—I'm—”

“Don't,” Claquesous says. “You haven't hurt my feelings, if that's what you're thinking. I did want a quick fuck, but clearly someone's gotten there before me, and it looks like he's claimed you for his cause.”

“That's not—”

“Isn't it?”

“Enjolras isn't like that.”

“Really? Biggest pop star in the world, and he's going to go for the coked out Conor Oberst knock off because—what? He's attracted? To _you_?” Claquesous shakes his head. “I only wanted to fuck you, but you're saying he doesn't have an ulterior motive? I know who Sank Amy are. I've heard that wretched moaning about freedom and equality they call music. But people were getting bored, weren't they? All those cold songs about revolution. Then you pop up, conveniently part of a decidedly social justice-friendly band, conveniently Arab, conveniently enamored—”

“I wasn't enamored.”

“Defensive, aren't we?”

Claquesous presses closer still, shoves his mask up so that Grantaire can see his mouth. 

“It reeks of PR,” Claquesous says. “You'll see. He only hasn't asked you to come out publicly because he knows his fans know you're not worth the ground he walks on. If you were Joly or Bossuet, the two of you would be the hottest gay couple in the world. But instead he keeps you hidden, inspiration for his love songs without being too dangerous—”

Grantaire steps away at last. “That doesn't even make any sense,” he says. “Why would Stars PR want us to have a relationship if they were just going to make us keep it a secret? You have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Maybe not,” Claquesous says. “Did our dear Cosette know about your relationship?”

“No.” No. She didn't, did she? She'd said—what had she said at brunch the other day? _I knew it_. But that wasn't what you said if you planned a relationship for PR purposes. And it wasn't like—Enjolras would never do that. “You're just pissed that I'm seeing someone,” Grantaire says. “And I'm sorry that you—that you mistook my friendliness. But that's all it was.”

“Whatever,” Claquesous says. “You're nothing special.”

He pushes past Grantaire, and Grantaire, shaken, walks back to Sardonic Colon's dressing room.

It's empty except for the sounds of one of his bandmates in the shower, and Grantaire does the rest of his cocaine all at once, blinks when it hits him immediately, and ignores the hammering of his heart against his chest.

He and a freshly-showered Eponine return to their bus together, but they barely speak. Instead, Grantaire curls up in his bunk immediately, too tense to go to sleep, staring out the window with his fingers looped through the strings on the shades. He thinks about North America, when they'd careened through the continent with only the walls of their buses and the road separating him from Enjolras. Grantaire supposes that in a way, the same is true now. The road just happens to be longer now.

Enjolras texts him: _how was your show? i saw joly's insta post. miss you already._

 _Claquesous was wrong_ , Grantaire thinks, and presses his forehead against the cold glass.

*

It's quiet on the Sank Amy bus all the time now.

Combeferre is always either texting Eponine or staring blankly up at the ceiling. Jehan writes sometimes, but mostly he and Courfeyrac are together when the bus is in motion. Marius is even more listless than Combeferre despite seeing Cosette more often than Combeferre sees Eponine. Even Bahorel is not as boisterous as usual, sitting in his bunk alone, smoking a bowl and reading a beaten up copy of 1984 that he keeps giggling at. 

“We're just all burnt out, I think,” Enjolras says at a rest stop. “I don't know. What do you think?”

Feuilly pays for his cigarettes and Enjolras's crackers and diet coke. “I think you're right. It's been ages. We need a break.”

Enjolras thinks about it. “We have weeks left on tour.”

“As long as we play every night, no one needs to know.”

“But everyone's a mess.” Enjolras sighs. “Should I not have suggested South America? Should we have taken a more significant break?”

Feuilly lights a cigarette and leans against the bus. For a moment, his languid pose reminds Enjolras of Grantaire. “Enjolras, everyone agreed. You're not the only person in this band who wants to change the world.”

Enjolras looks at him. “You're right.”

“It's not your fault that we're all working hard.”

“But is it my fault that no one talks to anyone else anymore?”

Feuilly raises first one shoulder, then the other, and it seems more like a stretch than a shrug until he says, “We just need a break. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?”

“We won't have one for—fucking weeks. Not til New York, which is after the Middle East, which is after Europe.”

“And then we'll miss each other, and we'll all be bored to death because we won't be working, and we'll inevitably write great music for our next album.” Feuilly elbows him lightly. “Any ideas?”

Enjolras welcomes the change in subject. Music he understands. “I was thinking—all those people who said our album was too pretentious. What if we just got more pretentious?”

“And less accessible?” Feuilly's brow furrows.

“No. We could turn the music into a crash course on—everyone. Chomsky. Marx. Fanon. Foucault. So the references are pretentious, but they're not oblique because they're explained.”

“You think Stars would go for it?”

“If Marius can make it catchy and Jehan can put in some good choruses? Why not?”

“I kind of like it,” Feuilly says. “We can all get in on the writing. I can give you some notes on Chomsky. I know Marius has read Nietzsche in like three different languages.”

“No one knows Foucault better than Combeferre.”

Feuilly smiles. “This is gonna be awesome.”

Feeling only half-comforted, Enjolras nods and follows Feuilly back onto their silent bus.

*

They're ready, Grantaire thinks, listening to a Garageband beat Eponine has sent him, to record.

Other than one track they recorded during their North America tour last year and another from that feverish month-long break between South America and Europe, they don't have any actual songs, but Grantaire is eager to get back to New York, and for once it's less because of homesickness and more because he genuinely can't wait to get to work. 

Grantaire babbles about this endlessly to anyone who will listen, to a radio host in Vienna (“We're so excited to get back in the studio, really, we've got some great stuff in the works”), to Montparnasse's unimpressed form at a Stars event in Budapest (“I've actually written a few songs, they're so different from before, more R&B and punk inspired? I think it's a cool fusion, do you want to—oh, shit, I'm sorry, is this weird for you? I don't—are you going to say anything? You're so weird quiet”), to Enjolras during a Skype date while Grantaire is in Athens and Enjolras is in Florence (“You should come hang out in the studio with us, maybe get a production credit, I know we don't play your kind of music, but I've heard you play for the sake of playing, and I _want that_ , so when I'm back in New York I think you should come stay with me, not just for sex reasons but also for music reasons”), to a still-not-talking-to-his-boyfriend-and-girlfriend Joly.

He's thinking about it at the Deak Erika gallery in Budapest, drumming his fingers against his thigh, staring at a painting but unable to see it, when someone calls his name.

“Grantaire! Is that you? Grantaire?”

Grantaire turns, but he's not expecting the lanky teenager with the acne-ridden chin staring back at him. Despite their height difference, the teenager reminds Grantaire of himself at that age: olive skin, curly hair flopping over one eye shaved close on the sides, a ring through his lower lip, dark circles under his eyes. 

“Hi,” Grantaire says. 

“I'm from Maghreb too,” the teenager says. His accent isn't European, and though there have been tons and tons of first gen European Arabs all around them while they've been in Europe, this is the first Moroccan immigrant Grantaire's met in the whole continent. 

Grantaire switches to Arabic by habit rather than choice: “That's awesome. Where in Morocco? What's your name?”

“Casablanca,” the teenager says. “It's Tariq.”

“I love that name. And I've loved it ever since I learned who Tariq was in high school.”

Tariq stares at Grantaire, and it strikes Grantaire that this isn't some chance meeting. Tariq knows who and what he is, and he's nervous.

“Ouidad or Raja?” Grantaire says.

Tariq's mouth drops open. “Ouidad,” he says. There's another brief silence, then: “I'm sure people tell you this all the time, but you saved me.”

People do tell him that all the time. It doesn't lose its effect, though. “Thank you. I—never expected my music to do that.”

But Tariq is shaking his head. “It's not the music. Or it's not _just_ the music.” He switches abruptly to French. “You aren't the only Arab in diaspora making rock music, but you're the only one who doesn't turn it into a political identity. Don't mistake me—I love political music as well, but you showed me that an Arab can be an artist separate from his politics. You don't know me so you can't know, but I was drowning in my political identity as a Moroccan immigrant to France, as a student in Belgium, and after the attacks in Paris and Belgium it was all anyone talked about—and it didn't help that I'm from Morocco like the attackers were. Everyone kept talking about politics, only politics, only ourselves as political beings. I thought I would suffocate.”

It's Grantaire's turn to stare at him.

“You showed me that we can be important and big and make good art without being slaves in our political identities. Thank you for that.”

A pause, then, in English: “You speak French, I read.”

“Oui,” Grantaire says, smiling at Tariq, baffled. “I just—” and for the first time he understands how Enjolras must feel, the inability to express an emotion because he feels it stuck somewhere between his clavicle and his chin, blocking him from speech. “I didn't realize I was having that kind of effect.”

“How could you not have known? To reject politics as a politicized body is a radical act, and you execute it every day.”

“I have a friend who would disagree with that.”

“He'd be wrong.”

“He'd argue his case. I'm sure he'd convince you.”

“Enjolras?” Tariq guesses. “I love Sank Amy as well, but they're not the same. They're not like you.”

“How did you know?”

“You did an interview last year,” Tariq says, and then blushes like he's revealed too much. “You talked about Sank Amy's politics and how you weren't interested.”

“And all the times people got pictures of us arguing—”

“Exactly. It's not difficult, if one is paying attention, to formulate a theory about the two of you.”

“A theory.”

“You're good friends. He's an idealist, you're an artist. He's an ascetic, you're an aesthetic. You're almost like foils in the literary sense, but you're friends for it.”

“You're a student,” Grantaire guesses. “What do you study?”

“Philosophy of power,” Tariq says, smiling faintly. “Mainly it's a lot of Foucault and Fanon.”

“I can see that. You're in your first year?”

“Yes. Just finished it. I—I didn't know you'd be in Budapest this week or I would've bought tickets.”

“You don't have tickets?”

Tariq shakes his head, looking crestfallen and much more like an eighteen year old than he does when he's half-quoting Judith Butler.

“What's your phone number?” Grantaire says. “I can get you some.”

Sardonic Colon get to invite people to shows if they want to. They rarely do, since Joly and Eponine don't speak to their families and the rest of them are scattered across the US, the Caribbean, and Africa, but Grantaire had cousins at their show in Marseille and Gavroche came to their show in Berlin. Grantaire is glad he can finally use up some of his ticket quota.

“How many friends would you bring? I can get you a few if you want.”

“Only my sister,” Tariq says. Back to the Moroccan French-Arabic hybrid. “I—I mean, this isn't necessary. I didn't want to flatter you, I mean. I only wanted to thank you.”

“I know,” Grantaire says. “If you're at the venue at seven, you can catch our openers. Otherwise you can wait until we go on around nine. I'll have someone bring you tickets. Can you get there?”

“No, I can make it. Thank you.” Tariq still looks shocked, still painfully young. “Thank you so much.” He gives Grantaire a few standard Moroccan prayers of gratitude, then kisses him on both cheeks and leaves the gallery.

Grantaire sits down on a bench opposite a large canvas, mostly blank with one red circular sticker in its center, feeling shaken. He feels less than real, like if someone pushed him over he'd shatter. He thinks, absurdly, of Humpty Dumpty.

He wants to call Enjolras, to babble about Tariq and music and say, “I told you so.” He wants to call Combeferre and tell him he was right. He wants to call Claquesous and tell him he's an asshole and that he's wrong about everything. He wants to call his band and tell them he can't wait to record their third album, that they're making a difference without even trying to, that their music is important almost despite itself, that there's pressure on them to release something good but just making the music is enough.

But he doesn't call anyone. He stares at the canvas in front of him until the red dot blurs, and then he closes his eyes and smiles and keeps this one small joy just for himself.

*

It's always odd driving through suburbs, seeing their cemeteries, their schools, people living their lives the way everyone else does. Breakfast, work, school, lunch, work, school, dinner, sleep. They're all the same, suburbs, here and in New York and Hungary and Argentina. Architectural styles vary but people don't. Even their cars are all the same, black and grey Honda sedans, brightly colored minivans and hatchbacks, dusty taxicabs.

Enjolras presses his cheek against the window of the bus, staring at the twisting landscape as they rush through it, wondering at how similar it all looks to every other suburb in the world. If he ignores the size of the streets and the fact that everyone's on the wrong ( _opposite_ , a needling voice in his head reminds him) side of the road, he might almost forget that they're in Europe.

Though everyone on the bus is awake, none of them are interacting. Even Jehan and Courfeyrac are in separate bunks for once, both playing with their phones, probably just texting each other. Combeferre is flipped onto his stomach, laptop open to a magazine spread featuring Eponine. He's just staring blankly at it, not even scrolling, and Enjolras thinks that he understands how Combeferre feels. 

It takes Enjolras a moment to realize that his phone is vibrating, and a moment longer to remember that it requires an action from him to answer it. 

“Quick question,” Grantaire says.

“Shoot.”

“What would you say if I wanted to come out, like, to the public? If I wanted everyone to know about us?”

He sounds high, Enjolras thinks. High and drunk. “I don't know. I mean, does it have to be immediate? It might be hard while we're in the Middle East, but—”

“No, I—no, sorry—”

“No, wait,” Enjolras says quickly. “I think it's a great idea as long as it doesn't have to be immediate. Like, being out in the Middle East might be scary, but when we're both in New York we could set up a public date or something.”

The unnatural energy comes back into Grantaire's voice all at once. “That would be great. I don't actually—I mean, we can do it if you want, but I just wanted to see.”

“To see what?”

“Nothing,” Grantaire says. There's loud music around him, but it's muffled, like he's in a room off to the side. “Have I ever told you that you make cocaine less effective?”

“What does that mean?”

“I don't know,” Grantaire says. “I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you soon. Love you.”

“Love you,” Enjolras says, and across him, Courfeyrac beams and winks.

*

“You really should quit smoking,” Joly says at a hookah cafe in Istanbul. “I swear I can feel myself getting secondhand smoke poisoning just from sitting near you.”

It's Joly, so it's only half a joke, but Grantaire doesn't let himself be swayed.

“No, dude, I'm serious, this is going to be so fucking awesome.” Grantaire passes the hookah pipe to Eponine instead. “I can't wait to be back. Cosette sent me a picture of the studio space Stars just bought in Brooklyn, like, seriously down the street from my old apartment. It's _gorgeous_.”

“Didn't she send you a picture of your new apartment too?” Eponine says.

“Who _cares_?” Grantaire says, finishing off his beer and looking around for a waiter and a replacement. “We're going to blow everyone away with this album. Seriously. It's going to be so good.”

“Not if Bossuet, Musichetta, and I aren't getting along,” Joly says, as moody as ever. “Stop hogging, Eponine.”

“I thought you felt yourself getting secondhand smoke poisoning.”

“Whatever,” Joly says, but he attaches a makeshift foil tip to the pipe when Eponine passes it. “We can record separately. Like Sank Amy do. It'd make for a more polished sound.”

Grantaire thinks about how much that idea would've frustrated him a year ago.

“It might sound better that way,” he says. “Especially if we do some of the R&B stuff I've been thinking of.”

“Bossuet has gotten really good with the synth.”

“But it'd be less organic if we weren't all in the room, even if we do record separate tracks.”

“But what if we're still fighting?”

“I thought we said no triplet talk tonight,” Eponine says, signaling their server for more drinks. “We get it, Joly. You have no idea how to make up with them.”

Truthfully, Grantaire hasn't been following his bandmates' fight as closely as he should. He's been too busy getting swept up in music and art, completely ignoring their argument in favor of visiting art museums and beautiful buildings in every city they visit. He finds himself longing for Enjolras in every high-ceilinged corridor, wishing he could teach Enjolras about art, show Enjolras how to appreciate art for its own sake instead of just for the change it can create. He sends Enjolras so many snapchats that his phone battery dies halfway through every day of sightseeing.

It doesn't hurt that all the European cities are so close together, so their drives are only two or three hours long most of the time, meaning they arrive at their venues early enough that Grantaire has time to sleep and sightsee all day long. Sometimes he brings Eponine along, but more often it's one of the triplets, whose complaints he half-listens to while he explores city after city.

It's the only way he can distract himself from the constant nagging in his gut, the strange mix of warmth for Enjolras and coldness for the distance between them. Seeing Enjolras in Prague lifted Grantaire's spirits temporarily, but now they're back to missing each other terribly.

It's okay, though, being in Europe. Grantaire feels more like himself than he has in forever wandering the streets of Istanbul. It's a feeling he rarely has anywhere other than Brooklyn, but it comes to him in bits and pieces in art museums and darkened dive bars, laughing with Bossuet or making fun of something with Eponine, this feeling that he's real and alive and genuinely feeling now instead of just going through the motions. He didn't realize he'd been doing that until now, staring at the Turkish straits in the freezing cold, beanie pulled low over his head to stave off the rain.

It makes him want to write, and for the first time in a long time he writes something that he likes immediately, something that isn't a dark song about his hatred for touring or a ballad about sex or partying or even a love song about Enjolras. It's just fun, half-ironic, full of puns about Turkey, and when he shows it to his bandmates they nod half-enthusiastically.

He knows that's not because of his song. For once, none of Sardonic Colon's problems are his fault: He has nothing to do with the triplets' fight. Eponine is off her game because long distance relationships are hard. They've been on tour for the better part of a year, and everything is burnt out and tired—and to top it all off, Stars is working Sardonic Colon—and Patron-Minette, Grantaire thinks, though most of them seem to ignore Sardonic Colon these days (“Good riddance,” Musichetta said savagely when she noticed them duck out of a Stars event early)—to the bone. Sank Amy are doing press every time Grantaire talks to any of them.

“None of us are together in a room for long enough to write,” Jehan tells Grantaire over the phone one day. “I mean, we use the Google Docs method like we have been this whole time, but it's not like we can actually record that way.” His voice is duller than usual, tired, but he doesn't bring it up.

“Enjolras thinks we can,” Courfeyrac chimes in. “But I think it sounds too impersonal that way. If none of us ever play the song together, I mean—why even bother being a band? Marius plays every instrument and he can sing okay, so maybe Sank Amy can just be his solo act. Or Enjolras can be like, a political folk singer songwriter.”

“Imagine Enjolras in a coffeeshop with an acoustic guitar,” Jehan says.

“Doesn't sound far off. It'd have to be one of those Marxist queer coffeehouses like they have in gentrified parts of Brooklyn.”

“Or in gentrified Boston suburbs, yeah,” Courfeyrac says. “I can already picture Wellesley students booing him off stage.”

“That means literally nothing to me,” Grantaire says. “When do you guys get back to the US? I want to ask Enjolras to record a song with me.”

“We're heading to the Middle East for a few weeks,” Jehan says. “I think we'll be back in time for Thanksgiving.”

There's a breath of silence, then: “Wait, _what_?” Courfeyrac says, and then Jehan realizes it a second later, gasping into the phone so loudly that it hurts Grantaire's ear.

“Yeah, we thought it might be a good collaboration for our next album, and Stars is starting to get annoyed that we haven't picked producers or potential collaborators or anything when it's supposed to be out next summer, and I just thought—it might be fun.”

Grantaire thinks about Enjolras all the time, constantly, while he's on tour. But the longer they're apart, the less he thinks about Enjolras's fire, his passion—those things are lovely and attractive and important aspects of Enjolras as a person, but there's something else, the way he looks when he's not thinking about politics, about social justice, about the revolution (that crease between his brows—lip sometimes tucked between his teeth), the way he looks when he's thinking about music. 

“You think he'd go for that?” Courfeyrac says.

“Why wouldn't he?”

He says it all the time, Enjolras does, that he only cares about music as a means to an end. But Enjolras plays piano and guitar beautifully, and when Grantaire first met him he thought it was a waste, all that talent given to someone who didn't care about music for its own sake. But he was wrong. Enjolras hides it well, but Grantaire knows him now, has seen him listening to music and strumming chords on his guitar when he thinks no one is listening. 

And he isn't ashamed of Grantaire. That fact, that truth, feels like it might set Grantaire on fire if he focuses on it for too long. But he isn't ashamed of Grantaire, and he makes beautiful music when he isn't trying to spark a revolution, and Grantaire is wildly, dazzlingly in love with him.

“Well—is it a political song?”

“No,” Grantaire says. “But if my identity is political, isn't everything I make political by definition?”

He thinks of Enjolras at that piano bar in Chicago, the soft half-smile, the fluttering of his fingers from key to key. He remembers people old enough to be their parents suddenly realizing the person playing isn't just a random student, that he's a professional musician, that he knows what he's doing. He thinks, constantly, of Enjolras knowing the melody to “Miami Baby” off the top of his head. But mostly Grantaire pictures Enjolras's face and Enjolras's fingers when he plays music just because it's music and music is lovely, and Claquesous was wrong, and the thought of it makes Grantaire feel lightheaded with want and worry and weak-willed love.

“Anyway,” Grantaire says. “I think he'd do it if I asked him, even if it wasn't political.”

There's another brief silence, and then Courfeyrac says, “Grantaire, you amaze me. If both of us weren't taken, I'd want to kiss you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Don't tell Enjolras I told you this,” Courfeyrac says. “But I think you're the best thing that's ever happened to him.”

“And possibly the best thing that's ever happened to Sank Amy,” Jehan says. “His lyrics are still—pragmatic to a fault. But at least they make some attempt at subtlety and art.”

“You think that's down to me?”

“You're the only difference.”

“Other than personal and professional growth,” Grantaire says.

“Spurred on by something or someone that demanded it,” Courfeyrac says. “You're wonderful. We'll see you soon. Miss you.”

“Miss you,” Grantaire echoes, and hangs up, staring at his reflection in the turned-off television. “You're wonderful,” he repeats, then puts his phone away and makes his way toward the bunks.

*

It's late October and it's raining in Paris.

Enjolras doesn't need Grantaire to tell him where to go and what to do for once. Paris he knows as well as the back of his hand, a city his parents used to bring him to in childhood, the type of place he should hate but doesn't.

He doesn't smoke and he doesn't drink, so when he leans over the edge of the railing on his balcony in his hotel room to take in as much of the city as possible, he doesn't have anything to do with his hands except squeeze the cold metal rod. He closes his eyes, inhales, exhales, lets the rain fall down heavily against his head.

The rest of Sank Amy are at a bar somewhere, and then that night's DJ opener has promised to show them the best party in Paris, but Enjolras is staying behind as usual.

It's odd being back after so long. They say their name here like cinq amis, which Enjolras supposes is actually the right way to say it but is jarring nonetheless. 

The last time he was in Paris was for another Sank Amy show, but they were in the city so briefly that he barely remembers it.

He remembers the times before that, but he remembers them as a monolith. He doesn't know if he went to a stuffy old money party in Paris when he was nine or twelve, doesn't remember how old he was when he slipped out of an event at the Louvre to look at a statue of Napoleon, isn't sure if the time he fell into the Seine happened between sixth and seventh grade or seventh and eighth.

It was the first city and possibly the only one in which Enjolras has ever been able to lose himself. If he focuses hard enough, he can almost be that preteen again, hating everything about his life but knowing he should be grateful, sneaking into the library to read Montesquieu and Robespierre and Tocqueville instead of following his parents to dinner with the Gastons or whoever.

He knows every inch of Paris, and he knows the country has its issues when it comes to its own motto, but Enjolras has always been profoundly affected by the phrase nonetheless: _Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité._

The first two come easily to him, and he takes them as givens, but the third used to be harder. But then Feuilly slid into his life, and then Combeferre and Courfeyrac and everyone else, and Enjolras found that for the first time he could be happy existing alongside other people, and that feeling so enthralled him that he understood at last the need for that third word, that fraternity, in the motto.

Liberty and equality are obviously there in the state of nature, but maybe fraternity is the most important of the three. Without it, government couldn't exist, and neither could civil society, and neither could neighborhoods or even families.

It's still raining when Enjolras leaves his hotel room, but he takes his umbrella, a massive one printed with a painting of a bird made of clouds that Grantaire pressed into his hands when he left Prague (“Western Europe is so fucking rainy all the time. You'll need it more than I will. Just—bring it back”). 

They're close enough to the Seine that Enjolras walks in that direction, keeping up his usual brisk pace despite not having anywhere in particular to be.

He watches the river splash against its banks, fierce from the wind and high from the rain, and then he walks along the closest bridge and down the street alongside the Seine until he's so tired that the rain beating against his umbrella makes him sleepy instead of excited.

He calls an Uber instead of walking the several miles back to the hotel, and when he gets back to his room he stands under the shower, turning the dial so it's almost hot enough to scald and closing his eyes.

Tomorrow they have another show in Paris, and then they're off to Spain and then the Middle East, and then New York, and then a week in Tokyo to finish their video. Everyone has been looking exhausted lately, especially Jehan, and they need a break in a way Enjolras doesn't think they have since that first rush of touring off their first album.

Paris. Madrid. Barcelona. Sevilla. Then a long drive into Morocco. A week in North Africa. A week in the few parts of the Levant they can get to. Two nights in Dubai. A fourteen hour flight to JFK.

Enjolras thinks of New York. Despite growing up there, he's never loved New York the way he's loved other places—Lima, Toronto, Paris—but Grantaire loves it almost more than he loves playing music, and so there must be something in it that Enjolras has been missing all these years. He's never seen Grantaire's apartment. He's been to the Met for events, but he's never really cared enough to look at the art. He's never been to the Museum of Modern Art at all. 

Like Paris, New York is tainted with memories of stuffy functions with his parents, but he never ran away from them in New York the way he did here. He just left the city altogether at the first possible instance, first for boarding school in Massachusetts and then for college upstate, and now he wonders if maybe he missed out on something wonderful in his haste to get away from it all.

Right on cue, Grantaire calls Enjolras to say goodnight, and for once he doesn't seem to be outside a club or party. He talks about something—music, Enjolras thinks, and an art museum—but Enjolras finds himself not paying any attention to what Grantaire is saying, only listening as Grantaire's voice flows over him.

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says finally. “Goodnight. I love you. Feel better.”

“What do you mean?”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says gently. “You sound exhausted.”

“I,” Enjolras says, and sighs. “So do you.”

“I'm in detox week. No cocaine. I'm trying to fix my sleep cycle, but it's not going super well.”

“Where are you?”

“Finishing up our last night in Istanbul. I'm just glad to be heading home so soon. We barely have any press while we're in New York.”

Enjolras closes his eyes and considers this. “I don't think I've gone three days without doing press in like three years.”

“Yeah, you guys are insane. I can't believe you recorded almost an entire album while on tour last year.”

“We haven't recorded much since.”

“No?”

“It's been too hectic this tour. We're barely ever together. I think Jehan and Courfeyrac are the only ones who even talk to each other on a daily basis.” He doesn't mention how long it's been since he's had a good conversation with Combeferre, how he barely sees Bahorel, how Feuilly spends all his spare time writing in his bunk, how Marius is literally never in a good mood anymore. “I don't know. You're right. I'm ready for this to be over.”

“Maybe you need to pull a King Arthur and unite Albion. You have the right hair color for it. And the right misplaced sense of nobility.”

“I'm not very noble,” Enjolras says.

“No, but you have a sense for it.”

Enjolras doesn't know what that means, so he doesn't question it, choosing instead to stretch out on his comfortable non-bunk bed and close his eyes.

“I'm falling asleep,” Enjolras says.

“Want me to stay on the line?”

“Yeah—please. Sure.”

“Do you want me quiet, or—”

“Tell me about your day.”

Grantaire laughs softly. “Sure thing, Apollo,” he says, and launches into a story about Joly, Musichetta, and Bossuet fighting over the last Cadbury Flake bar they had left over from the UK.

Enjolras presses his phone against his cheek, and when he sinks into sleep, feels like it's for the first time in weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is an interlude with graphics, which means it will undoubtedly take me a while, but I promise I have already started & am plugging away at them. If you have a specific character from whom you'd like to see an interview or some tweets, please let me know & I'll do what I can (I'm like one GIMP crash away from screenshotting Microsoft Word documents and calling them Vogue spreads).
> 
> Please leave a comment. Let's talk shit on your frenemies/on my writing/on Victor Hugo.
> 
> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com).


	5. interlude ii

 

interlude

** middle east; brooklyn **

 

  
“We need a day off.”

Enjolras says it to his incredulous bandmates on a day that's supposed to be chock full of press in Spain. They're scheduled with media from Spain and Morocco, as well as several Al Jazeera affiliates, and Enjolras is tired, but Jehan fell asleep in his breakfast that morning, so he's decided that they're taking the day off.

“Literally the last thing anyone expected from you,” says Bahorel, who is usually bouncing off the walls by this time of day. “How are we going to manage that?”

“I already talked to Cosette,” Enjolras says. “We had an extra day for travel anyway between Sevilla and Rabat, so we're taking the day off and flying instead of driving.”

“Stars is paying for it?” Feuilly says.

“It's like a two hour flight. It'll cost like two hundred dollars a person,” Enjolras says. “There's no reason Stars wouldn't pay for it.”

Stars actually refused to pay for it, Cosette told Enjolras glumly earlier that day. “They think you're just being spoiled,” she said. “But they've told me to put you on first class flights to Tokyo in January, so I don't know what the fuck their deal is.”

“I don't know why you say 'they' when you work for them,” Enjolras said. “Don't you mean 'our'?”

“Now you really are being spoiled. I tried, Enjolras, but I don't know, it doesn't seem like it's gonna happen.”

“I don't care—what is it, like, three thousand for all of us?”

“Including all your shit and the roadies? Probably closer to four or five.”

“Just take it out of my pay for the tour.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I mean—it's not like I'm using it for anything.”

“If you really don't mind.”

“Cosette.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll have someone book your flights. Get your passports ready.”

Now, Sank Amy breathe a collective sigh of relieve. Jehan visibly relaxes, tension seeping from his shoulders.

“We have hotel rooms for tonight,” Enjolras says, and Jehan actually laughs, slightly hysterical, relieved laughter.

“Jesus, Enjolras, that is the best thing you've ever said.”

The bus drops them off at a decent hotel not far from downtown Sevilla, and they all climb off, Enjolras lingering to text Grantaire.

“Hey.”

He turns. Courfeyrac is frowning at him.

“Yeah?”

“You're paying for this, right?”

“What?”

“You're such a shitty liar, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac says. “Did you know that?”

“I didn't lie.”

“Exactly. You always do that thing where you talk around the lie so it feels like it isn't actually a lie but really it's a lie by omission. You did it the whole time you were pretending not to date Grantaire. 'I don't _hate_ him, Courf, we just disa _gree_ ,' and 'We didn't hook up _that_ day, _Courf_ , just every day _after_ that,' oh, and don't forget, 'Yes I absolutely _don't_ mind sharing a room even though I _literally loathe_ sharing rooms with _any_ one—'”

“Is there a point to this?” Enjolras says.

“Just wanted to make sure I was right.”

“You already knew you were right.”

“I know,” Courfeyrac says, winking. “I just wanted you to know you're not as slick as you think you are.”

“Fuck off,” Enjolras, but he can't resist a smile. “You just know what to look for. A stranger wouldn't know.”

“Dude, a stranger would definitely know. You're such a shitty liar.”

“No one else has figured it out.”

“Yet,” Courfeyrac says. He claps Enjolras on the back, then squeezes him around the waist. “Thanks. We all really needed this.”

They start to climb off the bus, and then Courfeyrac stops. “Why did you request the break, though?”

“Jehan looked like he was going to pass out every time he picked up a guitar.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“In North America when Combeferre suggested a break, you almost tore his throat out.”

“North America was different.”

“How?”

Enjolras sighs. He doesn't know, exactly. Maybe he'd been stronger then. “I didn't want to be on that tour in the first place. I wanted—I thought it would've been better to tour with smaller artists. Artists who actually cared about the message. I just—I wanted to get right back on track afterward.”

“You were a disaster the whole time,” Courfeyrac says. “Until the end.”

“Yeah, well, Grantaire was distracting me toward the end.”

“Distracting you?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not sure I do,” Courfeyrac says, grinning. “Wanna clarify?”

“Not particularly.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Combeferre asks them when they reach the doors of the hotel, where he's standing with two key cards. He hands one to Enjolras.

“Our favorite sex positions,” Courfeyrac says. “Where's mine?”

“Jehan has it.” Combeferre adjusts the strap on his backpack. “Enjolras, we're sharing.”

“No, we're not,” says Enjolras, who booked the rooms himself.

Combeferre actually laughs. “I was hoping you'd respond with joy.”

“Sorry,” Enjolras says. “I'll try harder next time.”

“You don't have to pretend for me,” Combeferre says. “I know you're an antisocial dick half the time.”

“And a gift from the gods the other half,” Courfeyrac says.

They enter the elevator together, and though it feels less like a cure and more like a band-aid, Enjolras can't help but be somewhat comforted by the two flanking him, Courfeyrac's arm hooked through his and Combeferre warm on his other side.

*

After Europe, Sardonic Colon get six months off. They're supposed to be spending at least part of it working on music because they're trying to put an album out by next summer, but a break is still a break, and Grantaire immediately gets to work buying and furnishing an apartment in Brooklyn (chosen for him by Cosette, paperwork filled out by a Stars lawyer; he considers sending her and Marius on a cruise for Christmas as a thank you). It has actual rooms, and it costs him a good chunk of his savings account, and when he sits down in his living room for the first time (Ikea furniture, art instead of a television), he can't help but smile.

The thing is, being back in New York is like breathing again. It's late fall and gorgeous, the sun peaking through red-gold leaves on trees planted by some citywide clean air committee that nevertheless look beautiful contrasted with grey-beige concrete. Grantaire even misses the subway, which he rides with a beanie and sunglasses pulled low over his face like every other douchebag living in the part of Bushwick now referred to as “East Williamsburg” riding the L train to the East Village, but he finds it hard to care, spending most of his days doing the dumb New York things he misses when he's not here: weekday mornings at the Met when it's just old people and art people; long afternoon walks at Prospect Park with a cigarette and friends from college; weekend nights at his favorite gay bar in Williamsburg and his favorite dive in the Lower East Side and that one seedy place in Bushwick that serves drinks with muddled watermelon in them even though Grantaire's pretty sure the bartender has never seen a muddler in his life.

It's just that New York has this life about it, and few other cities (though some: Santiago, Buenos Aires, London, Munich, Brussels, Toronto very early in the morning and Paris very, very late at night) have it, a specific energy that permeates everything from the irritatingly tall buildings to the rats scrambling under train tracks—

Or maybe Grantaire has lived here just long enough to be completely addicted to how stressful and grey it is all the time, he thinks, stubbing out his cigarette and throwing it over the edge of the fire escape just in time for his doorbell to ring.

Grantaire climbs back through the window to open the door for Eponine.

They haven't seen each other in the two weeks since their Europe tour ended, and she looks well-rested for the first time in nearly a year, grinning at him, her entire head dyed dark blue.

“That's … a look,” Grantaire says, welcoming her in.

“Can we do a cover of that Jack's Mannequin song on New Year's?” she says. “Just for the hair.”

“We're only playing like three songs,” Grantaire says. “You really want that to be one of them?”

“Maybe we can just do, like, a youtube cover.”

“For our Patreon subscribers?”

Eponine snorts. “Jesus.” She surveys his living room. “This is really nice. Cosette chose it?”

“Yeah. She sent me some pictures and stuff, and I got to come see it in person before the final papers were signed, but yeah, it was mostly her.”

“She knows your taste well,” Eponine, who has barely ever said anything good about Cosette, says. Grantaire supposes she really is maturing, and anyway she and Combeferre have been together for long enough now that he's surprised at himself for being surprised that she's over Pontmercy.

“I know,” Grantaire says. “Exposed brick, open layout … it's almost like it's just a super trendy apartment in a super trendy area.”

“With a fire escape, though,” Eponine says, noting the still-open window. “Haven't you said all you need is a bathroom and a fire escape and a blanket, and your apartment's perfect?”

“I have been known to say that, yes,” Grantaire says. “Do you want to see the rest of it?”

He shows her his bedroom, hardwood floors, more exposed brick, a giant window that opens onto another fire escape and that he absolutely plans to smoke on naked after sex. Then they order delivery, eat it on his couch with Netflix open on his laptop.

“You really need a TV,” Eponine says.

“I'm not going to like, entertain people who just want to sit around watching TV, though.”

“Where are you going to get these cool friends who want to do anything else?”

“I'm in a band, dude. I can find them anywhere.”

“I'm in a band, too,” Eponine says. “And I'm the coolest member of said band. So really I think this is the best you can do.”

“Musichetta is the coolest member of our band,” Grantaire says. “Or Bossuet now that he knows how to use a synth. He's so multitalented. He's basically the new Skrillex.”

Eponine wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”

“But seriously—have you talked to any of them? Are they, like—living in separate rooms or something?”

“Bossuet's staying at some hotel literally down the street from here,” Eponine says. “Joly's at their place. Musichetta's staying with me.”

“I love that we sold half a million copies of our last album, but a member of our band is literally crashing on your couch.”

Grantaire makes his way back out to the fire escape, and Eponine follows him, pulling her grinder and a piece Grantaire is pretty sure belongs to Combeferre out of her bag.

“That reminds me,” Eponine says. “You should tell Bossuet to come stay with you.”

“Why didn't he just ask me?”

“Because you've been self-isolating as usual and everyone figured you wanted your typical post-tour break from us.”

“Weirdly, I don't feel like that this tour,” Grantaire says. “Maybe the triplet fights are good for my psyche.”

“Maybe Enjolras is good for your psyche.”

Grantaire snorts. “Doubtful.”

Eponine packs the bowl, inhales, and holds it. Grantaire spends a considerable amount of time making ridiculous faces at her until she can't help but laugh, and all the smoke comes out in one gust. It's a game they haven't played since early Sardonic Colon days, before any of them knew they were going to be famous, before they'd even written a song. She passes him the pipe, and when he has a lungful of smoke, Grantaire can almost pretend they're back there, sitting in his dorm room giggling like the perennial stoners they were back then, watching some shitty adult cartoon, only the tiniest inkling of Sardonic Colon present in the backs of both of their minds.

But then Eponine scratches her armpit and makes monkey noises, and Grantaire snorts and coughs as smoke comes unexpectedly out of his nose, and she claps him on the back and actually giggles.

He wouldn't go back, he thinks, passing her the piece and lighter. Even if he could, even if there's nostalgia—he feels, for what might be the first time in his life, almost content.

*

  


  
bigger: [i](https://i.imgur.com/NAEUOVZ.jpg) [ii](https://i.imgur.com/ztadIdn.jpg)  
[apple music](https://itunes.apple.com/us/playlist/grantaire/idpl.d088be506f0f46f49c821a460cf9cf39) | [spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/12100658482/playlist/6sjHXMREOs2MLsj2i1IeBh)

*

There is a particular type of resentment—Enjolras thinks, wide awake in a hotel room at three-thirty in the morning, scratching at dry skin on his arm—that builds up when everyone you know is sound asleep, and you're wide awake, sleeping pills having zero effect except to make you feel slightly delirious.

In a misguided attempt to bring everyone together, Bahorel and Jehan organized a movie night when they finished their gig in—god, what is it? Casablanca? Algiers? Enjolras can't recall ever having so much trouble keeping track of where they are in their tour.

Someone let Jehan have too much of a say over the movie selection, so they ended up watching _Frozen_ (Courfeyrac filmed Jehan singing along; Enjolras loudly discussed the irony of the script's acknowledging feminist issues within other Disney movies while the art gave its female leads near-identical faces and eyes bigger than their waists), _10 Things I Hate About You_ (“When will this 'nice guy' bullshit end?”), and _Aladdin_ (“Thematically appropriate, if orientalist to the point of blatant racism,” Feuilly said).

With the help of depressants, people started dozing off during the second movie—it's Marius who fell asleep first during the party scene, and he doesn't even smoke weed—and nearly everyone was out by the time Jafar got trapped in a lamp, all spread out over two beds and a couch.

Enjolras carefully disentangles himself from Feuilly and tries to remember the last time _he_ slept so soundly: was it in Sevilla, that night in the hotel room, when they'd been riding high on hope for this leg of the tour? Manchester, to the sound of rain pattering against his window? Paris, after a long day of revisiting all his childhood hidey-holes? Prague? Athens? Earlier?

It's his third night straight without solid sleep. Or fourth. He's lost count.

Marius and Courfeyrac are both snoring, and between them Jehan is curled on his side looking somehow much smaller in sleep than he does awake. Bahorel and Feuilly are sprawled on the same bed Enjolras has just pushed off, and Combeferre has claimed the couch for himself.

They're all asleep. Even Courfeyrac is motionless for once. It's so still in the room that Enjolras feels a sudden rush of anger; he almost wants to scream or break a glass or push the TV off its stand to break it up.

But instead he turns the TV off and creeps toward the door.

Courfeyrac's eyes open at the sound, and he shoots Enjolras a questioning look, but Enjolras pretends he doesn't see it, pulling the door closed behind him and making his way down the hall to his own room.

*

“You're sure this isn't a problem?” Bossuet says, already standing on Grantaire's doorstep with his suitcase behind him. Like all of Sardonic Colon these days, he was careful not to go outside without a hat pulled over his head (his most recognizable feature being—naturally—how giant and bald it is, Joly once lovingly explained) and sunglasses covering most of his face, but he's still distinctive, Grantaire thinks. He has celebrity-walk now, head ducked to avoid cameras but shoulders straight, walking like he owns the world.

“It's really not,” Grantaire says. “Besides, aren't you sick of hotels?”

“Your apartment is way nicer than ours,” Bossuet says, looking around, letting Grantaire take one of his bags. “And ours was meant to fit three people.”

“Cosette hooked me up,” Grantaire says. “It's post- _Suicide Note_ , post-VMA nom, post-Grammy hype.”

“So you're telling me your rent is like crazy expensive.”

“She recommended I buy it, but that felt a little too close to sell out.”

“But at least if you buy it you'll be secure in like, having a home. Like, if this all fucks up.”

“You think it still could?”

“If our next album is poorly received,” Bossuet says. “I mean—we're not Sank Amy. We don't sell like ten million copies.”

“We avoided the sophomore slump, right?” Grantaire says. “We'll—we're not going to fail. We'll be good. It'll be good.”

“Optimism from Grantaire,” Bossuet says. “I've seen it all.”

“I mean, it's not really like _you_ to be so pessimistic.”

Bossuet shrugs. “I contain multitudes.”

“Or you're just having a shitty week.”

“You were right,” Bossuet says. “I _am_ sick of hotels. What are your smoking rules?”

“I try to do it on the fire escape,” Grantaire says, gesturing. “There's one over there and one in my room. You want—”

“Yeah. I brought some weed, too, if you're interested.”

“If,” Grantaire says. “Such faith.”

This coaxes a small smile from Bossuet. “You know me,” he says.

They leave Bossuet's stuff in his room and climb out of Grantaire's window onto his fire escape. It's raining in Brooklyn, a light drizzle that the fire escape above them and the awning from the roof protects them from, but it creates a picturesque scene nonetheless: the brick building on the other side of the alleyway, its odd little gargoyles looking out of place on an otherwise rundown block of Bushwick warehouses, most of its shutters pulled closed, the rain, the clouds.

Grantaire pulls his scarf tighter and passes Bossuet a glass.

“Scotch, vodka, whiskey, or wine?” Grantaire says, reaching behind him through the window to one of three bars he has in his apartment (the other two are in his kitchen and bedroom, and he tries not to imagine Enjolras's reaction to the latter).

“I think it's a scotch kind of afternoon,” says Bossuet, taking his sunglasses off and tucking them into his collar.

It's the first time Grantaire has actually seen his face since they arrived in New York a week ago, and it surprises him how tired Bossuet looks, though he supposes it shouldn't. Bossuet was always more prone to partying than either Joly or Musichetta, and it makes sense that he'd step it up now that neither of the other two are there to temper him. It's the reason Grantaire liked Bossuet in the first place, although Bossuet's partying never reached the levels of self-destruction that Grantaire's did. Even in high school, when they'd skipped class to smoke weed, Bossuet thought up excuses and did all his homework while Grantaire found himself floundering in every class before magically getting his shit together on the last day of every quarter and charming his teachers into passing him.

“You look like shit, dude,” Grantaire says, because that doesn't seem to be the case this time.

“I haven't been sleeping much,” Bossuet says. “I don't know—on tour we worked like a million hours a day so it was easy to fall asleep, but now. I don't know, like—I haven't really slept alone in years. It's a lot harder than I expected it to be.”

“I concur,” Grantaire says. “Well, at least you'll have me now, just on the other side of the wall.”

He tries a smile, and Bossuet returns it, a little shakily.

“Are you three—” Grantaire starts, but Bossuet turns away.

“I don't know,” he says. “I don't want to—I don't think it's over, but—it's Joly and Musichetta, and they're both so stubborn, and they won't talk to each other and they definitely won't talk to me, and I just don't know what to—”

“You should fake an injury,” Grantaire says.

Bossuet snorts, rolls his eyes.

“No, I mean it. Think about it. Tearful reunion at the hospital. 'I don't know what I would do without you both I just love you so much.' 'Love conquers all, we will be together forever, blah blah blah et cetera—'”

“You might be on to something,” Bossuet says. “You know what I've started doing to kill time?”

“No,” Grantaire says. “Heroin?”

“God, no, that's not funny,” Bossuet says, shooting him a look. Grantaire wipes his nose, suddenly self-conscious. “I've started reading negative Sardonic Colon reviews. Just, like, for fun.”

“That sounds—fucking horrifying,” Grantaire says. “Why are you doing that?”

“I don't know,” Bossuet says. “Why not, right? Like, why be blissful and shit if you can just be miserable?”

“That sounds like a really terrible move, and I have to recommend that you don't continue to do that,” Grantaire says.

“Grantaire giving reasonable advice, Grantaire being optimistic—what's next? Grantaire suggests a collaboration with one Taylor Swift?”

“It's weird when I'm standing right here and you refer to me in third person.”

They sit in silence for a while, Grantaire's fingers itching, and then Bossuet says, “I know you want to look up negative reviews.”

“What? Of course not.”

“I shouldn't have told you,” Bossuet says. “Sorry, I'm just, I don't know—really tired.”

“Have you been going out a lot?”

“Not really,” Bossuet says. “I haven't really been in the mood. I—do you have like a Xanax or something?”

“You want to take a nap?”

“That'd be nice.”

Bossuet follows Grantaire inside, accepts his bottle of anti-anxiety meds, and disappears into the guest room.

Grantaire goes into his own room, opens his laptop, and tries to resist for a grand total of six minutes before googling himself.

*

_Where 'I Feel Finite' was at once pastiche and parody, 'I Namedropped You in My Suicide Note' is an overwrought, overthought mess._

_Sardonic Colon's sophomore (and sophomoric) effort is a perfect example of that pratfall to which even the most talented are sometimes prone: the slump._

_With 'Suicide Note,' Sardonic Colon become what they once so devoutly parodied, and the results show why the genre was so ripe for parody in the first place._

“It's as pretentious as the whiny emo Sardonic Colon used to mock,” Grantaire reads aloud. “I mean, I refuse to be annoyed at 'pretentious,' and 'become what they once so devoutly parodied'—I mean, that's just an evolution of our sound. Our fans loved it.”

It's three in the morning in New York, which means Enjolras is just getting up across the ocean. Grantaire listens as Enjolras brushes his teeth, but ignores him when he tells Grantaire to stop reading bad reviews of his own work.

“I did it after our first album, and it ended up messing with our artistic process for _weeks_ —”

“That's different,” Grantaire says. “That was your first album. No one's first album is amazing. Besides, you went platinum, you have monetary manifestations of the appeal of your art. All I have is—”

“—a sold out international tour, reviews from enough publications to show that people actually care about your work, actual rave reviews from publications that matter, a massive record deal with one of the biggest recording companies in the world, and fans commenting on your instagram that you've saved their lives,” Enjolras says. “Bad reviews happen. Not everyone's going to like everything you do.”

“Do you?” Grantaire says, and it's almost accident except that it's a question that's been haunting him for months.

“Do I like your music?” Enjolras says. “Sure.”

“Have you even listened to _Suicide Note_?”

“Of course I have,” Enjolras says. “And I've seen you play it live a bunch of times. _Grantaire_. You need to go to bed.”

“Says you,” Grantaire says. “What time did you wake up today?”

Enjolras's laugh is muffled. “I have to go. I love you, we'll talk later, I have an interview, and you need to turn off your computer and go to sleep.”

“I'll email you further complaints,” Grantaire says. “Not to mention quiz questions to ensure that you have indeed listened to the collected works of Sardonic Colon.”

“Does that include all the YouTube covers of Death Cab for Cutie you recorded in 2010?”

“Jesus, you found those?” Grantaire says, and it's sort of comforting to know even if it shouldn't be. “Never mind, you've passed the test. I'll still email you though.”

“You know how I love stepping back in time nine years to when email was relevant.”

“Email is still relevant,” Grantaire says. “I think people who work in offices use it all the time.”

“Aren't we lucky that we don't work in offices, then.”

Enjolras ends the call after more dawdling, both he and Grantaire reluctant to hang up, and Grantaire stretches out in his bed obediently.

He can't fall asleep, though.

It's not just the reviews. It's true that _Suicide Note_ is a more serious album, that it fits more obviously into the constraints of genre, that it's the kind of album people who are Music People like because it's good, not because it makes references to all the music they like or used to like.

With _Suicide Note_ , he knew what he was doing while he was doing it, and the reaction it surprised him. Now, with the follow up due at the end of their break from touring, all he has are tons of lyrics and vague ideas about Bossuet and a synth. The rest of Sardonic Colon are the same. Something isn't quite clicking, and he's terrified that for their next album, the negative reviews will outweigh the good.

Grantaire is a process-based person. He always has been: it's one of the few parts of his life that has always been organized and neat. It's why he likes writing with his band, from the early stages of inspiration that come from one of them to recording in the studio with Joly and Eponine to incorporating the rest of them. The best interviews he's done, he thinks, have been the ones that focused on him as a creator of work and not merely as its performer. But overthought and overwrought? Surely not.

That's also why he likes postmodern art, art where you can see the brush strokes, the dripping paint, the unprimed canvas. Art where you can make out the layers and steps. He can't deny that some works are technically brilliant while being photorealistic, but for Grantaire, those are less interesting than the ones that feature sloppy messes of paint, so that you can see exactly what the artist did, and when in the process he did it, and, if you're very careful, why. There's a Franz Kline painting at MoMA that he wants to show Enjolras, and the entire thing is black and white paint dragged across a canvas to create some odd combination of abstract mess meant to tap into Freudian or Jungian subconscious and literal portrayal of the act of painting itself.

Enjolras, for all his layered meanings and intricate lyrics, is not the same. He approaches the creation of music in a much more haphazard way, waking up sometimes in the middle of the night to call a member of his band with a tune or a line he's thought of in his sleep. He takes down notes constantly, whether he's reading on his tour bus or mid-conversation with Grantaire, and sometimes he'll duck out of the room to write or quickly record something on his phone.

Grantaire remembers long evenings with Enjolras in South America, Enjolras stopping mid-news report to bend over his guitar and open up a Google Doc so covered in highlights and underlines and comments that it was impossible for Grantaire to make sense of it. Grantaire and his band usually edit his lyrics into something that makes sense as a separate step of their process before moving into trying to record. Sank Amy are the opposite: they do everything at once. Some of the songs on _Polis_ exist in four or five different versions, and Grantaire is pretty sure they only finished the actual recording of all the vocal tracks a few days before the album went to press.

All of this means there's no possible way, Grantaire thinks, for it to work.

But he proposes it anyway, in the middle of a long email, which he and Enjolras have taken to sending each other now that they're so outside of each other's time zones.

_we should do a collab._

*

  
  


*

In the aftermath of the fight, Enjolras will think that he should've seen it coming.

He supposes that he _did_ see it coming. He just thought it would happen sooner, and when it didn't happen within his predicted timeline, he thought it might not happen at all.

It's an hour and a half flight between Algiers and Tunis, so they're in a hotel room overnight, which is nice because they're sleeping in the Tunis airport tomorrow night, then catching a red-eye to Cairo.

“—we're making them so much money, though—” Enjolras heard Combeferre say, exhausted, at a meal earlier, and then Combeferre met Enjolras's eye and looked away like it's _Enjolras's_ fault their record company doesn't want to throw down anymore cash than it has to.

“It's a capitalist enterprise,” Enjolras said. “We just have to work around them.” And then Combeferre's mouth had opened, and then it'd closed, and then he hadn't said anything for a while.

But it's been hours since then, hours during which they played a show and showered and Enjolras retreated to his hotel room but the rest of them went out to enjoy whatever nightlife there is to be enjoyed in Algiers. And now Enjolras is sitting on the end of his bed alone, staring at the weather channel on TV, a big white “17°” in front of a black background as a woman points to the map on the other side of the screen and comments in Arabic about … something.

It's midnight in Algeria, which means it's seven in New York, which means Grantaire is probably—doing something. Enjolras stands, realizes he has no idea what Grantaire does when he's not touring, and then sits down again. He could be at a bar, or he could be at dinner, or he could be recording, or he could be—

There's a knock at his door, and Enjolras opens it expecting the room service he ordered, but instead it's just Combeferre, looking a little worse for wear, but it takes Enjolras a moment to pin down what exactly makes him look that way: He's in contacts, not glasses, and one of his eyes is a little bloodshot. His shirt is untucked. His collar is a little messy.

“Hey,” Enjolras says.

“I think we need to talk,” Combeferre says, looking around distractedly. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“Really?”

“No,” Combeferre says, looking back at Enjolras. “Although it's nice to see you haven't lost _that_ particular condescension.”

“Is this about earlier?” Enjolras says. “You were right, we deserve, like, basic humanity. And that includes not sleeping on the floor in an airport. They're already pissed we came to the Middle East at all, though, I doubt we can convince them of much.”

“What's happened to you?” Combeferre says.

“What?”

“When have you ever doubted that you could convince anyone of anything?”

Enjolras steps back, feeling rather like he's just been slapped in the face. “This isn't about—I just meant that Stars are used to making money, and it's not like they can charge the same prices for tickets here, so I don't think we should try our luck.”

“You spent two months trying your luck in North America,” Combeferre says.

“What?”

“You called Cosette and Javert day and night trying to get them to take Sardonic Colon off the tour.”

“I just thought—if I could get _one_ of them to budge, the other would follow.”

“And you don't think applying that logic to this would be effective?”

“It wasn't then.”

“When did it happen?”

To anyone else, Combeferre would look perfectly in control right now, leaning slightly away from Enjolras, arms crossed, eyebrow raised as if he's utterly unimpressed. But Enjolras sees right through him, and that he has no idea of the source is startling.

“What?”

“Your relationship. When did it happen?”

“Uh—December?” Enjolras says. They'd been in Seattle, he thinks. That one out-of-place Dunkin Donuts behind the hotel, just off the highway. Two shows from the end of the year. “Toward the end.”

“I understand keeping it a secret until we were off the tour,” Combeferre says. “But after that. Chicago? New York? South America? _Europe_?”

“We've never shared the details of our personal lives,” Enjolras says. “It's never been our—the way we work. Not when you used to sleep with Courfeyrac, not when you started seeing Eponine—”

“You're my best friend,” Combeferre says. “It might have been nice to know that when I was miserable and missed her, you were feeling the same way.”

It's not an accusation. His voice isn't even raised. Combeferre doesn't fight quite like other people fight: he's good at knowing exactly what to say to throw Enjolras off, and when he's upset enough to communicate it, he doesn't mind cutting in. Combeferre fighting is nothing at all like Combeferre arguing, or discussing, or debating, because Combeferre fighting allows himself to strike at his opponents' emotions.

“Combeferre,” Enjolras says.

“You're right. We never share details of our personal lives. But we always knew anyway—it was always apparent. We didn't actively hide things. We didn't lie.”

“I didn't _lie_ ,” Enjolras says.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Combeferre says.

Enjolras stares at him.

“Not all of us,” Combeferre says. “Not everyone. Just me.”

“I didn't think—I just didn't consider it.”

This is evidently not the right thing to say. Combeferre's face goes from impassive to hard edge, set jaw, clenched teeth.

“Combeferre,” Enjolras says. “This isn't—I didn't _think_ before I did it, I just—I just wanted to. And afterward I kept wanting to, and now I'm in so over my head—like, emotionally I mean—and—”

For a moment it looks like Combeferre is about to soften, but then it comes out before Enjolras can control it, weeks of resentment and anger and irritation and, unmistakably and yet also surprisingly, hurt: “And _you said I don't do anything with an ulterior motive_ , so I was _right_ to keep it to myself!”

It's Combeferre's turn to take a step back.

“You have to admit,” he says. “It seems unlikely. You happened to fall in love with the one person who wants nothing to do with anything you care about.”

“That isn't true.”

“He doesn't care the way you care. You have to stop seeing things in people that aren't there.”

“Now _you_ sound like him,” Enjolras says.

“I didn't say you sounded like him.”

“But that's what you meant. That's why you came here, isn't it? To tell me that Grantaire's bad for me—”

“I didn't come here because of Grantaire. I came here because of you. None of us are—” Combeferre stops, waves a hand uselessly in the air, and it isn't until this that Enjolras sees just how upset he is. Combeferre is never at a loss for words. “None of us are talking, and I already apologized to you for what I said at brunch.”

“I don't owe you the sordid fucking details,” Enjolras says. “None of you. I'm sorry you're upset, but I'm not sorry I kept it to myself. My entire fucking life is public, and having one thing that was just—just _mine_ , just for a little—I don't think that's too much to ask.”

Combeferre opens his mouth, and Enjolras knows what he's about to say: he gets it, he's sorry, he agrees, Enjolras deserves at least that, a modicum of privacy, it's selfish but he's never selfish, he never wants anything but he wants this and maybe he should have it why _shouldn't_ he have it—

“You wanted your entire life to be public,” Combeferre says. “You wanted all of this. We wouldn't be here if your entire life wasn't public. Don't join the club of celebrities who make it big and then complain that people want to know about their lives. You're better than that.” He pauses, then, glances at the TV. “Anyway, I didn't ask you to tell everyone. I just asked you to tell me.”

Enjolras stares at him. “Leave me alone, Combeferre.”

“That's the whole problem,” Combeferre says, but he only stares at a Enjolras a moment longer before leaving.

*

Eponine crashes with him after a party (“Bossuet's not even here, don't make me go all the way back to Manhattan, _please_ ”), and Grantaire wakes up the next morning hungover in his bed with the sound of her voice floating in from the guest room. His door is wide open, and he's still wearing his clothes, but he can piece together most of the night before, so he figures it can't have been that wild.

It takes him a while to figure out why he feels so tense, a clenched sort of sensation that's completely different from the dull ache of his hangover and strain of the last bits of cocaine leaving his system, but when he sees his phone—a snapchat from Enjolras—he remembers.

He knows if he asked Enjolras, said please, said it like it was a favor and not an opportunity, Enjolras would do it. But it's not—Grantaire doesn't know how to say it. _I want you to get that I'm capable of working hard for something good_ seems a little desperate. _My music is important too_ is petulant, and _I want to show you that I'm good at this_ is even worse, and anyway he's supposed to be _over_ this. Enjolras says he loves him, says he likes his music, and that's supposed to be _enough_ , and yet—

Somewhere in his apartment, Eponine gives one of her dry laughs, an aborted “d-huh” sound that almost resembles a hiccup. Grantaire wonders only for a moment what she's laughing at, because Combeferre's voice comes a moment later: “What the fuck was that?”

“That was a _laugh_ , jackass.”

“Really? It sounded more like a really messed up hiccup.”

“Do your hiccups sound like that? All full of, like, hilarity and humor and—and fucking, fucking _mirth_?”

“You say fuck so much.”

“That bother you?”

“What would you do if it did?”

“Roll my eyes,” Eponine says, and Combeferre laughs, throaty and full-bodied, and then sighs.

“I miss you,” he says.

Grantaire stands up and closes his door. Eponine seems to take the hint, and the next time she speaks, her voice is more distant, like she's gone off to the fire escape instead of his living room.

Grantaire presses his face into the pillow, feeling utterly miserable, and ignores the vibrating of his phone until whoever it was stops and calls again.

“Hey,” Enjolras says.

His voice is quieter than usual, and it's clear how tired he is from the way he doesn't immediately launch into an argument about something or mention a fight he had, their potential collaboration, his perpetual dissatisfaction, the revolution.

“Hi,” Grantaire says.

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“Being here is bleak.”

“Where are you?”

“Tunisia.”

“Ah. Homeland-adjacent-adjacent.”

“I just wanted—I don't know.” Enjolras sighs into the phone. “I don't know.”

“What? Did you realize Tunisia's revolution didn't turn the place into a utopia?” Grantaire says, rolling his eyes and grinning even though Enjolras can't hear him. “Did you think your this-land-is-my-land math word problem of a band had solved all the world's problems?”

“I was hoping we'd started making headway.”

“But problems don't just like, disappear. Like, for something like racism to end, like, entire generations would have to die off. Not just the baby boomers. Millennials too. You could fix every law and people would still be racist.”

Enjolras is silent for so long that Grantaire thinks he's hung up.

“Can you not?” Enjolras says at last.

“What?”

“For once. Please. I don't want to fight any more today.”

“Okay. I—okay.”

Enjolras breathes on the other line, quiet again. “I know it's not the same thing, but I keep thinking about that time you got bottled in Buffalo.”

Was that the city? “Yeah?”

“I don't know. You didn't—you were really pissed that night. Understandably.”

“Was that a urine pun?”

Enjolras makes a sound that might be a laugh. “No. I just—” he exhales. “I don't know. I don't want to be here.”

“How much longer?”

“I don't know—a few hours?”

“Hotel?” Grantaire says, staring at the greys and whites and reds of his own bedroom.

“Yeah.”

“Your own room?”

“Yeah.”

“Wish I was there.”

“I wish you were here, too.”

“Really?”

“Desperately.”

“I miss you too.”

There's a short silence, and then: “What do you miss about me?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Uh—everything.”

“Come on, Grantaire, you can do better than that.”

“You're such an asshole.”

“I've been told,” Enjolras says dryly, sounding so much like himself that Grantaire closes his eyes.

“I miss your mouth,” he says, picturing it. It hurts how much he misses it, and the pain momentarily distracts him from his earlier irritation at Enjolras. “I miss your mouth on my mouth, I miss just watching you talk about something you care about—I miss your teeth.”

“My teeth?”

“Yeah. Your—I don't know if you know this, but every time you kiss me, you start with your teeth, you know, like how Charlie Bucket eats chocolate?”

“What?”

“Like you're just trying to get the tiniest taste so you can make it last longer.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, so quiet that Grantaire has to strain to hear it.

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says.

“I wish you were here right now so I could do it.”

“Do what?”

“Taste you,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire accidentally lets out a bout of hysterical laughter.

“Fuck,” he says. “Sorry, sorry—”

“Is this not doing it for you?”

“No, it is, it's just—it's ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, this phone sex thing, it's not like—I mean, I want it to work, I do, and it always felt weird to jack off on camera and I really kind of like the idea that we'd be—I don't know—like would this bring us closer together or—I mean, it's one thing when it's spontaneous, it's not like I ever expected you to get off to the Declaration of the Rights of Man—”

“If you were here right now, I'd kiss you to get you to shut up,” Enjolras says. “But not your lips. Too obvious, and you'd just keep talking into my mouth. I'd go for the neck instead, that place where the tendon kind of sticks out?”

“I—yeah,” Grantaire says, brushing the spot and closing his eyes, imagining that it's Enjolras's mouth instead of just his own fingers there. “That would work.”

“Yeah, it would absolutely work.”

“God, it's so hard to—” Grantaire fumbles with his pants. “I hate it when you're not here. Every single second that I spend touching anything other than you is a waste of time.”

Enjolras gives his own odd little laugh. “What are you doing right now?”

“Trying to unbutton my jeans.”

“I knew that emo shit would bite you in the ass eventually.”

“I wish.”

“Maybe next time we're together. Would you like that?”

“Biting? You already know I like that,” Grantaire says. He can almost feel it, Enjolras's teeth scraping against his nipple, hot breath, the soothing touch of his tongue afterward.

“My hand is down my pants now, too,” Enjolras says. It sounds strange in his voice, that idealistic revolutionary timbre directed at something so physical, so fleeting. “I'm wearing sweatpants so it's a little easier, but—”

“Let me guess,” Grantaire says. “You skipped the underwear.”

“That's—how did you know?”

“Because I know you, Enjolras,” Grantaire says. “You planned this, and you planned that feeling you get when your dick brushes against the front of your pants. I know you like those light touches—so you can almost pretend it's another person, almost like it's _me_ instead of just some uniqlo joggers.”

“Fuck, Grantaire—”

“—but I wouldn't give you light touches if I were with you right now, Enjolras. I'd push you down on the bed and fuck you the way you so desperately want to be fucked, like you're the only person in the world who matters.”

Enjolras actually whimpers at this, and Grantaire wraps his hand at long last around his own cock.

“How often do you do this,” Enjolras says, voice breathy and hoarse and hot enough that Grantaire reaches into his drawer for lube.

“Do what? Phone sex? Don't you think you'd know?”

“No, I mean—touch yourself.”

“Oh. Uh—nightly?”

“Do you watch porn?”

“Sometimes. But usually it's—usually I'm thinking about you.”

“What about me?”

“I picture you on your knees for me, mouth open, looking up into my eyes—” Desperate, hungry for it, like he was that night in—what was it? Amsterdam? Prague? “Ready to just take me all at once—”

“I wouldn't, though,” Enjolras says. “I'd start slow—you know that ridge right below the head? I'd focus on that for so long that you could only make noises after. Just my tongue and the head of your cock. I would make it the only part of your body you could even feel—touch it now, just that tiny bit—”

Grantaire groans and obeys, arching back into his bed, wishing he was making contact with something other than just his hand.

“Unfair,” Grantaire mumbles into the phone, which he has dropped on the pillow next to his ear. Enjolras's laugh, unhinged and a little tinny, comes out of it in response. “Fuck—I'm picturing my fingers in your mouth right now, you sucking on them like they're everything—”

“I would,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire is pleased to hear that Enjolras is out of breath. “I would, and I wouldn't be gentle, either, your fingers—the callouses—”

“I'd leave my fingers in your mouth and I'd bite your earlobe, your neck, your lips—”

“My nipples,” Enjolras says, voice more whine than words. “That thing you do—the tongue, the blowing, the nibble—”

“Your inner thigh, that spot you like, and I'd kiss the base of your cock like—like it's an altar and I'm—”

“You're worshipping at it,” Enjolras says, and then moans so filthily that Grantaire squeezes mid-stroke, shoves his free hand under his shirt to twist his own nipple, lets himself arch up off the bed.

“Yes,” Grantaire says. “Yes—Enjolras—”

“I'm ready, I—”

“Come for me, Enjolras—”

Enjolras does, one choked down groan, and a moment later Grantaire does too, all over his shirt.

They're both quiet for a long time after that, breathing unsteadily into their phones, and then:

“That was much hotter than I expected,” Enjolras says.

“I ruined my shirt,” Grantaire says.

“If you ever tell anyone that the altar thing made me come, I—”

“You'll what?” Grantaire says, trying not to resent Enjolras, not this soon after they've had literal phone sex. “Smite me?”

Enjolras laughs, shaky and breathy. “Can you video chat? I want to see your face.”

They switch to Facetime, to an Enjolras Grantaire is wholly unprepared for, pink-faced and flustered, lying back on his bed with his head half-turned to the side, naked from the neck down.

“Why are you still wearing clothes?” Enjolras says. “It's like you _want_ the upper hand, Jesus.”

“If you want the upper hand, you can laugh at the fact that you got me off so quickly I didn't have time to take off my shirt.”

“Or you can tell everyone I was pretty much naked and ready for you before you'd even gotten home.”

Grantaire's spent cock twitches lazily at that. Enjolras sees him looking and smiles.

“You're so easy,” he says.

“Says _you_ ,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras accepts that with a breathy laugh, and Grantaire turns to face the ceiling and forces himself to be okay with it.

*

*

_where are you dude?_ Grantaire texts Bossuet, and is wholly unprepared for his response:

_my apt. come over for wine & cheese tonight? bring ep_

Eponine, who has spent most of the rest of the day at Grantaire's apartment, stares at him in mild shock.

“Do you think they made up?” she says.

“God,” Grantaire says. “I hope so.”

She steals a t-shirt of Grantaire's, and paired with the skin-tight pants and leather jacket of the night before, actually looks appropriately rockstar. Even her hair is suitably delinquent-chic, a mess of hairspray and dry shampoo that somehow still looks magazine-ready.

“I like that you maintain the emo aesthetic even when we're just going ten minutes away to hang out with our bandmates,” Grantaire says. “It's that kind of 24/7 dedication that inspires me to be a better artist.”

“I just didn't feel like washing my hair, and I don't think your pants would fit me,” she says. “Besides, I need armor for this throuple-tervention.”

“Did you just spit up? What was that?”

“What did Enjolras say about collaborating?”

Eponine swipes two bottles from Grantaire's wine rack and requests an Uber while he stares at her, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta are all sitting on their couch when Grantaire opens to the door to his apartment, Bossuet sprawled all over both of them with his left arm in a new cast, Joly packing a bowl, Musichetta sipping from a glass of her favorite merlot.

“What happened?” Eponine says.

“Bossuet broke his arm at a club last night and I was his emergency contact,” Musichetta says.

“Bossuet, come help me unwrap all this cheese,” Grantaire says, raising one of the bags he's carrying.

Bossuet, who looks like he'd be quite content to stay put on the couch, nonetheless stands and follows Grantaire to the kitchen.

“I don't think I'll be very helpful,” he says. “I mean, I literally broke my arm.”

“So one of your injuries did good for once,” Grantaire says. “Amazing how these things turn out.”

Bossuet gives Grantaire an unimpressed look. “If you're suggesting—”

“Oh, I absolutely am,” Grantaire says. “How are you going to tell them you're just wearing a fake cast?”

“I'm just going to say the doctor read the X-Ray wrong, it's just a sprain, sprains can be treated with, like, elevation—”

“What, are you going to walk around with your hand in the air like in sixth grade?”

“Don't talk shit just 'cause I did better than you that year,” Bossuet says.

“Yeah, and decided you wanted to be a _lawyer_.”

“Law school is super expensive,” Bossuet says mildly. “I can afford to pay for it now.”

Grantaire snorts. “You're all good now, though?”

“I think so,” Bossuet says. “You know, it just takes one life-threatening injury to make you realize your differences were never that big after all—”

“You sprained your wrist.”

“No, I paid a nurse to tell my emergency contact that I broke my wrist.”

“They gave you a room? At a hospital in New York, on a weekend?”

“No,” Bossuet says. “I met them in the waiting room.”

“And they believed you?”

“People believe what they wanna believe,” Bossuet says, grinning.

“You unexpected genius.” Grantaire claps him on the shoulder. “I can't wait to record.”

“Me neither,” Bossuet says, and it's sincere enough that it actually does some work in shaking Grantaire out of his funk.

*

Enjolras has started to lose all hope that Sank Amy will ever be the same, that this funk that they're in isn't permanent.

Everyone picked up on his fight with Combeferre relatively quickly, and though no one mentions it, they've taken to leaving him and Combeferre alone in rooms together, forcing them to sit next to each other at restaurants, even once ensuring that they end up sitting together on a four hour flight. It's just enough meddling to get under Enjolras's skin, so that he's irritated and snappy all the time, and Combeferre, though more stoic, isn't much better at hiding it than Enjolras is. They ignore each other completely, and the fight goes from a normal argument that they could've resolved easily if they'd spent a few days apart to full fledged cold war.

But if he's bad around Combeferre, he's fucking awful when he's alone, all hot resentment and rash meaningless anger, not the righteous kind that helps him get work done, not the passionate kind he used to get around Grantaire—just pissed off meaninglessly, sitting in his room on a with Ambien coursing uselessly through his system.

He calculates: it's four a.m. in (he checks his phone to confirm) Istanbul, which means it's nine p.m. in New York, which means Grantaire is almost definitely not sitting at home waiting for Enjolras to call.

Enjolras texts him anyway, a quick, _you up?_

Almost immediately: _1) it's only 9 apollo get used to time zones 2) you just sent me a booty call invitation text & i can't even redeem it because you are literally 5 0 0 0 m i l e s away_

 _what are you doing?_ Enjolras says.

 _like i said. booty call af._ A moment's pause, then: _we're recording & then there's this club opening cosette says we should make an appearance at. and by “we” i mean me & eponine & only one of the triplets because the other two are literally at this moment in the studio eye fucking each other it is literally the most annoying thing thing ever. do you need something? i can duck out if u wanna do the virtual booty call thing ;)_

Enjolras stares at the giant block of text, then pulls off his clothes and climbs into bed, too physically tired to care about putting on pajamas.

 _can you just put me on speaker and let me listen in?_ Enjolras says.

The call comes a moment later.

“Guys, our potential future collaborator, the mighty VMA-winning Enjolras, wants to listen in. That cool?”

There's a chorus of yeses and yeahs, and Enjolras pulls his covers up his chin and listens.

He can't tell what's going on really without the visuals, but the cacophony coming through his phone—Musichetta is singing and Grantaire is harmonizing and someone seems to be fucking around with a synth, but mostly they're just messing around, trying to come up with something that sounds good—helps smooth the tension out of his body, and when he wakes up to his alarm after too-little sleep, he sees that the call is still connected.

Grantaire is humming to himself on the other end, somewhere quieter now, and when Enjolras says, “Grantaire?” he stops, bumps into something, and swears.

“You are up way too fucking early,” Grantaire says. “I was expecting to use up at least another seventy-five minutes.”

“No one has minutes anymore.”

“I have an ancient grandfathered plan with unlimited data. Very cool.”

“You can't afford un-grandfathered—? Whatever,” Enjolras says, rubbing his eyes. “We're doing fucking—press.”

“I thought you were going to talk to your doctor about your prescription,” Grantaire says, and it's way too early in the day in for this conversation. Enjolras hasn't even had coffee. They're in fucking Turkey, surely he should be drinking coffee. “You can't keep pulling all-nighters, Enjolras.”

“Sometimes I have to work, and then it throws off my whole, like, circadian rhythm or whatever.”

“I know you don't need me to tell you this, but you probably shouldn't do that.”

“You probably shouldn't do cocaine,” Enjolras shoots back, trying to figure out how to use the hotel coffee maker. “I thought you were going to a club opening.”

“I am,” Grantaire says. “I wanted to shower and eat first. It's only one.”

“Are you now fully nocturnal?” Enjolras says.

“Are you?”

To be nocturnal, one has to sleep during the day. Or at all.

“I guess to be nocturnal you'd have to actually sleep, though,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras laughs. It makes his head hurt. There's a familiar churning in his stomach, and for a moment he thinks he's going to throw up, and then the space in front of him flickers, and then Grantaire is saying, “Enjolras? Did you—”

“Sorry,” Enjolras says, blinking himself back. “Sorry, I just—I'm just.”

“Tired,” Grantaire says.

His voice has an odd gentle tone that Enjolras hasn't heard before. His coffee finishes brewing, and he drinks it so quickly that it scalds his throat, then makes a second cup.

“Maybe you should cancel the press,” Grantaire says. “Like, are you really—”

“No, we have to do it,” Enjolras says. “If we weren't in Turkey—but there's so much we want to say, and we have this huge reach and this loud voice, and—we have to do it.”

“What if you let the rest of them do it, and you just take a nap?”

“I'll nap after,” Enjolras says.

“Promise?” Grantaire says.

“I—”

“Enjolras.”

“Fine,” Enjolras says. “I'll try to take a nap.”

“Call me if you can't.”

“You'll be asleep.”

“Call me anyway. You can listen to me snore.”

Enjolras feels overwhelmed, suddenly, some strange feeling rising from his core straight into his throat. Somehow Grantaire has him figured out, knows how much he relies on the sound of his voice—they've been sending emails but it just hasn't been enough—and instead of—of using it against him, of teasing him for it, of engaging in his usual relentless mocking—instead, Grantaire is just barely acknowledging it and offering to help.

It shouldn't surprise him. It doesn't surprise him, and that it doesn't surprise him surprises him.

Enjolras closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the wall.

“Thanks,” he says, unsure how to convey how much he means it, and then, “I'll do it.”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

“No, I mean—the collab. I'm in.”

There's a brief pause, then: “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Great,” Grantaire says. “Awesome. I—great. It'll be great.”

“Great,” Enjolras says dryly, and Grantaire laughs.

“I'll email you,” Grantaire says. “See you soon.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

*

*

Grantaire has noticed it since being back, of course—it'd be impossible _not_ to notice it. He remembers L.A. when they got back from South America, getting constantly mobbed with fans, but somehow it's different now. There are pictures of him coming out of clubs in his inbox nearly every morning, sent to him as a joke from a Courfeyrac who still—for some reason unknown to Grantaire—reads tabloids. He can't even tweet without inspiring a Buzzfeed article.

That would be tolerable, though, because all it takes to ignore it is a turning-off of screens, a deleting of emails.

Worse is that people just take pictures of him when he's on the subway, as if he can't see them. His cover—a beanie, sunglasses, and several days' worth of scruff—no longer works. Instead it's like a beacon, calling attention to him. In Brooklyn he assumes they're mostly fans, but when he gets to Manhattan and starts his trek up the east side to the Met or across town to the Museum of Modern Art, he feels the shift. It's worse now that they're approaching Christmas, now that Rockefeller Plaza down the street from MoMA is all done up and tourists have flooded midtown even more than usual.

 _i know this is like the most cliché thing ever,_ he texts Enjolras. _but idk i just feel like nothing i do belongs to me anymore? like my life and everything about it is completely public_

 _things are cliché for a reason though,_ Enjolras responds—moments later, even though he's in Dubai or something and it's at least three in the morning there and Enjolras doesn't party, not even in Dubai.

Grantaire facetimes him, and there Enjolras is, looking more gaunt than ever. He's never looked quite so ill, Grantaire thinks, and he makes a mental note to sort it out once Enjolras is in New York. He'll call his own psychiatrist if he has to.

“I get it,” Enjolras says. “I mean, it's you, so it's all about the music, and if you have people snapping pictures of you it's not like they can hear the music, and you don't mind when people come and talk to you about the music but when it's about partying rockstar Grantaire and the cocaine on the tip of his nose instead of about musician Grantaire—and the cocaine on the tip of his nose, by the way, you should get rid of that—”

“Saving it for later,” Grantaire says.

“—but I get it. You're not one to—I used to think that's why you did this, the fame, before I—I didn't really get it. Like, prioritizing the music. But I get it now.”

Grantaire stares back at him, unsure how to respond, and then Enjolras smiles. It really shouldn't still have this effect on him—it's been nearly a year, Grantaire thinks, since Enjolras started sending those smiles his direction semi-frequently—but it does, a fizzing sensation, and he has to blink because he's momentarily dazzled.

“I know this isn't really helping,” Enjolras says. “I just—it makes sense. That you'd be feeling this way, I mean. That you wouldn't be … I don't know. Celebrity-happy.”

“Any tips, People Magazine's thirty-seventh sexiest man alive 2014?”

“How do you know the exact—? Whatever. Do all the PR stuff Cosette makes you do and get a new pair of sunglasses,” Enjolras says. “And remember that you're not—you're not how famous you are. You're not the people taking pictures of you, you're not the pictures, you're not your twitter followers, you're not even—you're not even your music. You're you.”

“I'm me,” Grantaire says.

It shouldn't be comforting, but it is, somehow. Maybe it's just the way Enjolras looks when he says it, tired and drawn but confident, and Grantaire thinks that if he looks at it long enough he might be able to just melt in the light of Enjolras's smile. It's a marked difference from before, when he felt like he was burning up every time Enjolras looked at him, and he thinks he likes it better this way, warm despite how suffocated he felt before he called.

“Did you get my lyrics?” Grantaire says. “I think we can have you in on the chorus and maybe the second verse.”

“Yeah, listen,” Enjolras says. “I tried coming up with a melody but I think there's some stuff in the wording that's kind of discordant. I didn't want to have Jehan look at it without asking you first, so—”

“Well, we usually have Joly do it, and that might help keep it tonally consistent,” Grantaire says. “And he and Bossuet will probably be more useful in coming up with the melody than either of us.”

“I mean, it's on message, absolutely, I just want to make sure that the song is as good as it can be.”

“I never realized you were a stickler for actually making the music sound good.”

“Cold,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire laughs. “I'm joking, of course. You're a musical genius. A political Jeff Mangum.”

“Who is that? The guy from Bon Iver?”

“Jesus Christ, Enjolras,” Grantaire says. “Ask Combeferre. Or Jehan. Or, like, a person who's been outside at any point since 1980—”

“Oh, right,” Enjolras says. “ _It's an old and it's a broken Halle—_ ”

“ _No_ , God. What was the wording you though was discordant?”

Enjolras launches into a technical breakdown, and Grantaire only half-listens, still floating on the idea that this—Enjolras—is for him. It's _his_.

*

But Grantaire and Enjolras don't get to talk that often, not in real time anyway. Enjolras is too many hours ahead of Grantaire, tucked into a hotel room in Amman or Dubai (a city he hates on principle) for bedtime while Grantaire works or parties in New York. Most of the time, their schedules don't coincide well enough for it.

They've spent time apart, but never quite like this, never with a timezone difference this intense. Eight hours is a lot to grasp, and it's worse when Grantaire spends most of the daytime asleep or recording, worse when Enjolras feels like he hardly ever sleeps anymore.

And Enjolras finds—to his horror—that he's grown ridiculously accustomed to hearing Grantaire's voice every day. He flicks through his voicemails, listening to the ones Grantaire has left him during his various cocaine binges or randomly while sightseeing (“Hey babe. Do you like being called babe? I'm in Barcelona and I miss you.” “I get it sometimes, you know. Your whole thing. The world is so big, but it's beautiful, too. I miss you.” “Bossuet just spilled an entire bottle of Pellegrino on a sound mixer, oops.”), but soon he tires of the short messages and has them all memorized anyway.

“I just miss his voice,” Enjolras accidentally says around Courfeyrac in Jerusalem, who stares at Enjolras like he's the biggest idiot Courfeyrac has ever met.

“Aren't you lucky that he records his voice for money, then?” Courfeyrac says.

Oh.

“Oh.”

Enjolras thinks that if he didn't know the members of the band, he would like Sardonic Colon less. He likes their irreverence, their theatricality—present in their music despite their relatively stripped-down shows—but if he didn't know them well enough to tell the ironic from the earnest, he thinks he'd find them insufferable.

As it is, he actually loves their first album, and their second, though sadder (and it hurts something within him that shouldn't hurt when he hears Grantaire sounding like _that_ ), is growing on him. The collaboration they're working on is more hopeful than anything on _I Namedropped You in My Suicide Note_ , but he supposes that makes sense considering the title of the album. So far Grantaire's lyrics, while occasionally sardonic where they're meant to be inspirational, are more intricately layered than anything Enjolras has done himself of late.

He's more excited than he should be about the end result of their song, and he has his eyes closed in their trailer. He doesn't notice he's drifted off until someone tugs one of his headphones out.

“What—fuck,” Enjolras sputters, blinking at the sudden brightness. “What's going on?”

“We need to be on stage in ten,” Combeferre says.

No one else is in the Sank Amy trailer, and Enjolras can't believe he slept through soundcheck and pre-show. Worse, he can't believe no one woke him up. He's going to sound like shit without warm ups—

Combeferre passes him hot tea with honey, then leaves Enjolras alone in the trailer.

*

They're playing outdoors even though it's December, and it's chilly even in the Levant. Enjolras, wrapped up in the red jacket he's worn so rarely on this tour, sings his heart out.

Soon, within the week, he'll be in New York making music with Grantaire, whom he loves.

Until then, he's on tour, playing music to people who love his music—and, regardless of his beliefs about what is or isn't worth his time, is starting to find that the act itself can be rewarding.

He spots a couple toward the front halfway into “If I Do Not Love the World.” Their show is sold out, and all tickets were general admission, which means everyone toward the front lined up hours in advance—but the couple, despite being close enough that he could, if he wanted to, reach out and touch them, aren't paying attention to him at all. They're just kissing openly, and it's the last thing Enjolras ever expected from his music, but he wrote a song about love being a radical act, he's not unfamiliar with the concept, and—hope, despite itself, blooms in his chest.

He thinks of one of the first times he met Grantaire, at a party in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, when Grantaire strutted up to him, all swagger, pupils blown, _you know your friends call you Apollo?_ —and Enjolras, unsure how to deal with this new species of partier, opened his mouth and closed it and opened it again, and he thinks he hasn't been able to get Grantaire out of his head ever since.

Now, he presses closer to the mic like he's seen Grantaire do a thousand times, imagining it's Grantaire there with him and not this spindly rod of plastic and metal, and belts out the last few words.

A few feet away, Courfeyrac takes up his usual hypeman mantle, announcing Feuilly's name to raucous cheers. Feuilly stands and bows, sits back down, bangs on his drums in a thirty second solo he's been changing since they first started touring. It's almost indistinguishable from the cheers and applause around them.

Courfeyrac points out Marius next, then Bahorel, then moves on. The rest of the band will come a few songs later, and then halfway through the set, Enjolras and Combeferre will do an acoustic version of “Secondhand Smoke” while the rest of the band takes a quick pee-and-water break. It's been their M.O. all tour, and Enjolras loves those five minutes when he gets to sit down and dedicate himself fully not, as Grantaire would say, to music with revolutionary intent, but to Grantaire himself.

The crowd shouts the words of “Gaza” back at Enjolras like it's a chant instead of a song, and across the stage Combeferre meets his eyes and smiles, and for the first time in a long time, Enjolras thinks: _Yeah. This could work._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk guys I wouldn't have minded just writing an entire chapter of Enjolras and Grantaire having phone sex & generally being there for each other. But I can't resist some good drama so…
> 
> Also, SORRY that this took so long. I swear I had the entire thing written a month ago and just had to work up the motivation/find the time to make the graphics. I write a lot of this fic on the go (the notes section on my phone is mostly just dialogue between Eponine and Grantaire that I come up with on the subway), but obviously I can't do the same with the graphics. 
> 
> also, once I said that this fic would be delivered in one 20k word package, but it's spiraled completely out of my control and so far the doc is 70k words so if anyone knows someone who will punch me in the face for money please get them in touch w/me
> 
> also, please tell me if you spot any typos in the graphics because I always see those like months later and get annoyed :/
> 
> also, please leave a comment! I live 4 them (seriously, I don't have a lot going on)


	6. new york, pt. 1

_i missed your skin when you were east / you clicked your heels & wished for me_

*

It's a 45 minute drive from Grantaire's apartment to JFK, a long stretch up the cloudy Nassau Expressway during which Grantaire flicks through the top ten songs in Belgium on Spotify. The third time they hear Stromae, Eponine reaches over for Grantaire's phone with one hand, swatting at him until he laughs and changes it to “Sardonic Colon Radio,” which plays an odd mix of pop punk from 2003 and PBR&B from 2015, Jimmy Eat World and Melanie Fiona combining to create something that works surprisingly well.

“This is who they think we sound like?” Eponine says, eyes mostly on the road in front of her as their rental careens down the highway. It starts to rain twenty minutes in, fat rain drops bouncing off the windshield. “Well. Bossuet better get good with that synth.”

“And I'd better forget how to sing,” Grantaire says. “Seriously, these pop punk dudes—like, obviously I'm not gonna talk shit on Jimmy Eat World, but—”

“But the vocalist sounds like he's straining to take a shit, yeah,” Eponine says. “Which terminal is it?”

Grantaire checks his phone. “Terminal 1.”

“Fuck," Eponine says, eyes flicking up to the rearview. "We just missed that.”

She does another rotation through the winding parking lots and terminals at JFK, eventually finding a parking spot reasonably close to the exit of the terminal in question.

“Remember where we parked,” Eponine says, handing Grantaire the parking ticket and checking her dark blue hair in the mirror.

Grantaire does the same, and is glad to see that he doesn't look nearly as exhausted as he has for months. He's even put weight on, the hollows beneath his cheeks a little less pronounced, collarbone much less visible than it is when he's been doing coke four nights a week for several months.

“We look great,” Eponine says. “Let's go.”

Combeferre and Enjolras arrive alone, the rest of their band having gone off to their respective homes for a few days, Feuilly back to Jordan to see family, Marius to Connecticut to see his grandfather, Jehan to Arizona, Courfeyrac to Baltimore, Bahorel to San Francisco. Eponine and Combeferre have a trip to Chicago planned, but Enjolras's dad lives here and his mother is up in Boston, and he doesn't seem to want to see them, anyway.

They arrive with stiff facial expressions and too much stuff, carts overflowing with luggage, amidst a mass of tourists coming home from Tokyo or coming to see New York for the first time. Eponine practically jumps Combeferre, leaping into his arms with an aggression Grantaire has rarely seen from her away from a drum kit. But Enjolras is more subdued, staring at Grantaire with wide eyes. 

“Hey,” Grantaire says, knocking his knuckles against Enjolras's.

“Every time I see you, I'm surprised you're real,” Enjolras says. 

“Weirdly enough, I feel the same way about you.”

Finally, Enjolras kisses him, swift and soft, but with just enough of a tug at Grantaire's hair that he knows this is really Enjolras standing in front of him, guitar and suitcase of smuggled wine in tow. They haven't kissed in public much, both because they haven't been physically together enough for it and because they're still technically not out to the public, but it feels shockingly normal to do it now, quotidian, amazing in its inevitability, like the sunset.

“Cute,” Combeferre says. Enjolras doesn't say anything, doesn't even look at him, and is Grantaire imagining it or is there tension there?

“Let's go home,” Eponine says. 

“By 'home,' she means my apartment,” Grantaire says. “I have glasses for the wine and, uh, plates for the cheese.”

“Sounds perfect,” Combeferre says, grinning. “Good to see you, Grantaire.”

Somehow they've managed to completely evade the fans, possibly thanks to a stealthy Instagram post of all of Sank Amy at the Burj Khalifa posted two hours ago. It's a refreshingly simple trip back from the airport, considering. Grantaire drives so Combeferre and Eponine can canoodle in the back seat, and Enjolras stares out of the passenger window like he's never seen New York before, his hand palm up on the console until Grantaire winds his fingers through it. He can almost hear Joly in the back of his head— _That's dangerous, Grantaire_ —but he finds himself hard-pressed to care, not when Enjolras is so close to him, fingers, skin, touch—

They park themselves in Grantaire's living room, invite Joly and Musichetta and Bossuet over, and act like friends who aren't weirdly famous, in two massively successful bands, who've just spent months away from each other.

Warm from the wine and feeling heavy and happy during a game of Celebrity, Grantaire leans against Enjolras's chest and feels his insides liquify when Enjolras kisses his head.

“Love you,” Enjolras whispers, private, and Grantaire smiles.

*

Grantaire waits until the morning to pounce, but Enjolras saw it coming almost immediately on their reunion.

Enjolras's head hurts, and his stomach feels sort of funny, and his lips are still stained purple. Hungover isn't a feeling he's well-acquainted with, but he recognizes it when he sees it, and Grantaire must know because Grantaire hands Enjolras a mug of coffee and then takes it as an opening to ask.

“When were you going to tell me that you and Combeferre aren't talking?”

“We're not—not talking,” Enjolras says carefully. They haven't made up exactly, he and Combeferre, but they're certainly on better terms than they were before. “We just had an argument, and then we didn't really make up but we're kind of over it? Or—the opposite. We made up but we're not over it.”

“And it was about …”

“Nothing,” Enjolras says. “Something—just something dumb.”

“So … me.”

“Don't,” Enjolras says. “Grantaire—”

“You can be honest with me, you know,” Grantaire says, settling back in his bed, steaming mug of coffee in hand. “I won't be upset.”

“I know how you are. You'll be all—” But he doesn't want to say it, what he thinks Grantaire will think, that he isn't worth a fight, that he isn't worth _Enjolras_ , because admitting that means admitting—“Whatever, fine, it wasn't about you but you were brought up.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean—we fought about a bunch of stuff, like stupid stuff, things we'd normally argue about and then come to some kind of agreement, like how we should deal with the shitty way Stars treated us in North Africa.”

“Like that time you had to camp out in an airport, right.”

“Exactly. Like, normally we'd talk about it, maybe argue, then decide on a course of action based on both of our perspectives.”

“Jesus,” Grantaire says. “You two are so annoying.”

“It works for us. It always has. We don't—we rarely disagree on the big issues, just the logistics, and the logistical issues are easy to solve because they don't _matter_ , not really. They don't mean anything, they're just—a means to an end.”

“You're stalling,” Grantaire says, which is startlingly correct.

Enjolras sighs. “I don't know. We're all just a mess. I feel like I haven't talked to anyone in my band since—Chile at least.”

“That was months ago,” Grantaire says.

“We had a movie night a few weeks ago, but everyone got high and fell asleep, so the team-building stuff didn't really work.”

“So you fought trying to pick a movie? Is that what you're telling me?” He stops suddenly, goes completely still. “No. Everyone got high and fell asleep before you could get anything done, you were self-righteous about it, he called you out, you haven't made up.”

“ _No_ , don't be ridiculous,” Enjolras says, and is surprised at how genuinely hurt he is by this summation. “You don't think I'm—I mean, I'm not _like_ that, I understand that people need breaks and escapism and fucking—fucking _sleep_ , I don't—”

Grantaire wraps an arm around Enjolras's shoulders. “I'm sorry. You're right. You're—easy to underestimate. Sometimes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you're better than everyone thinks you are, but not the way they expect.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—everyone expects you to only care about the cause, but you care about—you care about other things. You care about your friends.” 

Enjolras feels himself slump into the pillows behind him without actively willing it to happen, and Grantaire follows him down, tucks himself against Enjolras's chest.

“What happened?” Grantaire says. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to talk about it.”

“I love you,” Enjolras says weakly. “Have I told you that yet? I love you.”

“You have, but I don't mind hearing it again.” 

“At brunch that day in Prague he insinuated that I don't care about anything except the revolution, and he apologized for it but I just—I was still—I don't know. Hurt. I guess. By that. Because why would you say that to your—I mean, we're _best_ friends, you don't think things like that about people you love, right? Otherwise how could you—no one is like that, not _really_. I mean, that obsessed? Only like—”

“Top athletes and, like, the uber ambitious. Frank Underwood and Cristiano Ronaldo.”

“Exactly. And I'm obsessed, I can admit that, but I'm not—I'm not _inhuman_.”

“But he apologized.”

“Yes.”

“And you know that isn't what he meant.”

“Yes.”

“And that was months ago.”

“Yes.”

“Something else happened?”

“We just had a—like, a stupid argument, something logistic, but it turned into—I didn't even think about it when we were doing it, but he was upset I'd kept us a secret from him, like—and he has a right to be, like I don't owe him information about my life but he _is_ my best friend and he's right, we could've commiserated over the long distance thing, it doesn't have to—it didn't have to be so lonely.”

Enjolras stares at the ceiling. He hasn't spoken about this with anyone, not even his therapist, and it's good to get out all at once, but he feels exhausted anyway, and the throbbing in his head has only grown more powerful since he started talking, a thumping pain on which the caffeine is having only minimal effects.

“I just wanted it to be ours,” Enjolras says. “I never want that, but I wanted it with you.”

“Plus sneaking around is pretty hot.”

“I'm sorry that I—I just, I know that I hurt you, then, too, by keeping it secret.”

“I forgave you for that, like, immediately. It was a misunderstanding, you weren't—I was wrong too.”

Grantaire kisses the corner of Enjolras's mouth, and despite the caffeine, Enjolras closes his eyes and finds himself sinking back into sleep.

*

When Enjolras wakes up again, Grantaire's side of the bed is cold and empty. Enjolras pushes up, reaching for his glasses, but it doesn't take long to spot Grantaire. He's on his fire escape, one leg drawn up, both hands preoccupied—one with a cigarette and the other with a sketch of their surroundings.

Enjolras makes his way over. It's cold outside—unseasonably warm, but cold nonetheless, and he pulls his sweater more tightly around himself as he sits down on the hard metal floor.

“What are you drawing?”

“Hm?” Grantaire says. “Nothing. I—the building. Those gargoyles? I'm not a great artist, but it helps with writer's block, you know?”

“You have writer's block.”

Grantaire rubs at an eye with an ink-stained hand. “Not exactly. I don't know. I just feel kind of stuck? It'll resolve itself soon, though, don't you worry.” There's a darkness under his eyes that looks more real than usual, more blue-brown than just hollow. “What do you want to do today?

Enjolras considers him. “I'm meeting Combeferre for brunch. Want to come?”

To his credit, Grantaire doesn't betray an ounce of surprise. “Is Eponine going?”

“I think Combeferre's staying with her, so probably.”

“Maybe if I cut down,” Grantaire says.

“What?”

“It might help the—writing. Sorry. Yes, yeah, I'll go to brunch.” He scribbles something on his pad. “Can we take a cab, though? I don't really feel well enough for the train.”

“I genuinely don't think I've been in any kind of subway system since Obama's first term.”

Grantaire looks up at him, laughs in surprised delight. 

“What?” Enjolras says.

“You are so ridiculous,” he says, putting his pad down and climbing back in through his window.

*

Grantaire doesn't know what he's expecting, but brunch is much less awkward than he thought it would be, Combeferre and Eponine looking like such a power couple that the presence of their love alone dulls the obvious tension between Enjolras and Combeferre.

It's there still, though, present in the slightly clipped notes between them, the way Eponine and Grantaire dominate conversation—until Eponine, rolling her eyes, sets her fork down.

“Enough,” she says.

“Enough what?” Enjolras says.

“I thought you two made up,” Grantaire says.

“Well, we didn't,” Combeferre says, just as Enjolras says, “We did.”

They look at each other, then—they're at a diagonal from each other, the biggest possible distance at their square table between them, and Grantaire thinks about hypotenuses and sips at his bloody mary. 

“Eye contact while we're on stage does not constitute making up,” Combeferre says.

“Right, but we opened it up to the potential of making up,” Enjolras says. “And once you do that—what's the point in staying—”

But Grantaire knows Enjolras too well for this bullshit, knows he's still hurt from the argument, knows better than anyone that brushing over a fight like this one is rarely helpful in the long run.

And yet Combeferre sighs.

“You're right,” he says. “There isn't a point. I'm sorry I was an asshole, and you're right that I'm not entitled to your personal life if you don't want me to be.”

“I'm sorry I didn't realize that you'd be hurt by my not telling you,” Enjolras says, which from where Grantaire is sitting feels like kind of a bullshit apology.

Combeferre doesn't call him on it, but he raises an eyebrow, and then Enjolras groans.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fine. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when I could have been.”

And just like that it's over, the conversation immediately switching to something more palatable (“Wow, that presidential election, huh?” “Who'd have thought it'd turn out like that?” “But what does this _mean_ —” Combeferre, voice taking on that superior graveness it gets sometimes—“for the American people, and indeed for Americans _as_ a people?”). 

Eponine makes eye contact with Grantaire across the table, and Grantaire shrugs. Despite loving his bandmates, he's not friends with anyone the way Enjolras is friends with Combeferre—that weird connection they and Courfeyrac have has made him wonder why none of them ever got together. Eponine rolls her eyes and gives a little half smile, and Grantaire quirks his own lips in return.

Enjolras seems to notice Grantaire's very conspicuous nonverbal conversation with Eponine, because he squeezes Grantaire's knee under the table, and then, when Grantaire winds his fingers through Enjolras's, doesn't move his hand back to his fork. 

Grantaire glides his thumb across Enjolras's knuckles, and he could just be imagining it, but he swears that Enjolras's shoulders relax.

*

It feels like sheer relief that he and Combeferre have made up, and Enjolras finds that for all that he thought they were okay before this, it's obvious they weren't, that they needed Eponine to force both their hands. He feels infinitely more at ease now, lapsing into talk of politics and music easily until both Eponine and Grantaire disappear to the restroom.

“So,” Enjolras says.

“We're good,” Combeferre says. “At least from my end.”

“I'm sick of not talking to you,” Enjolras says. “I don't even care. I just—” He stops, looks across the restaurant. “Fuck it, right?”

“If it happens again,” Combeferre says, “we'll have a proper fight. This isn't worth it. I know you love me, and you know I love you, and—” Combeferre says, clears his throat. He's never at a loss for words, Enjolras thinks, and he should feel triumphant that he's finally managed to silence Combeferre, but he doesn't. 

“I agree,” Enjolras says. “No harm meant despite harm done? On both sides?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Enjolras glances up instinctively when Grantaire starts to make his way back from the bathroom, and Combeferre follows his gaze before looking back at Enjolras.

“Oh,” he says.

“What?”

“I don't know how we didn't notice,” Combeferre says. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—you look at him like you're expecting the world.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you look lovestruck fucking constantly,” Eponine says, sliding back into her seat. “Don't worry. Grantaire looks like that when you're not looking, too.”

“Did I hear my name?” Grantaire says cheerfully, settling back in next to Enjolras and squeezing his knee under the table, a habit they took up in South America and haven't really given up despite no longer being strictly secret. “It's rude to talk about people behind their backs, you know.”

“We were just talking about smitten your boyfriend is,” Eponine says.

“With who?”

“With _you_ , idiot.”

Grantaire turns a crooked smile on Enjolras. “Really?” he says. “I hadn't noticed.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes and squeezes Grantaire's knee back.

*

Grantaire's New York is completely unlike Enjolras's parents' New York or Sank Amy's New York. Instead of swanky financial district restaurants, there are places that look like actual holes in the wall (“This place hasn't been on Thrillist yet so we're totally good”); instead of galas at the Met, there are meandering trips through the contemporary art galleries at MoMA (“Pollock's the most famous action painter, obviously, but for me no one compares to Franz Kline—see how you can see the strokes? You can tell exactly what he did to arrive at the finished product. Isn't that amazing?”; “There it is—'Starry Night.' Van Gogh's Van Gogh, obviously, but man, it's good, right?”; “'The Return' isn't, like, in this hemisphere, but 'The Lovers' is incredible, right? Look—”; and every time, Enjolras has to agree: Franz Kline's brush strokes are amazing. 'Starry Night' is good. 'The Lovers'—he thinks of his umbrella, Grantaire's umbrella—is weird but, yes, incredible; for the first time he feels like he really gets art); instead of massive concert venues and screaming fans, there's ducking onto the L train wearing too much clothing over their faces and giggling into each other's scarves at how well their disguises work.

At night, at the right angle, Enjolras can almost see the stars from Grantaire's fire escape, peeking through the smog that hovers over the city like a vulture. They're bright enough sometimes to counteract the light pollution from Manhattan, and Enjolras who's spent the last year abroad seeing stars from everywhere—the desert, he's discovered, is particularly good for star-viewing—finds himself smiling, thinking that this where Grantaire has been this whole time, smoking out here at night and looking up at the stars that happen to shine bright enough to show through even the smog and light pollution and cloud cover.

But all the same, it only takes a week of break for Enjolras to start feeling antsy, to worry too much about what's coming next, to start writing haphazard (and, he has to admit, shitty) lyrics whenever Grantaire is in the studio. Once or twice, he hangs out with Sardonic Colon, but they haven't reached the steps that need him yet—“We'll let you know when we need you for demos,” Musichetta tells him. “Just keep letting us know if you want to make any more changes.”—and he gets the idea they're a little irritated by his constant emails and texts, slight changes, rewordings, “Wouldn't that part sound better with a slightly faster beat?”

“How dull it is to pause,” Grantaire says one night when they're at his apartment, Grantaire getting ready for a party and Enjolras picking at his guitar but producing nothing of particular note. “To rest, not shine in use, as though to breathe were life.”

Enjolras looks up, not having realized that Grantaire is paying him any attention. “What?”

“It's—don't take this the wrong way or anything, but are you sure you want to be here?” Grantaire says. He's looking in the mirror, but his eyes don't meet Enjolras's, focusing instead on his hair. “It's been like one week and you're—”

“I definitely want to be here,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire smudges eyeliner onto his eyes. 

“Okay,” Grantaire says. “Sure. Want to come out tonight?”

“Not particularly.”

“Want me to stay in?”

“Not for my sake,” Enjolras says. “I'm going to bed soon.”

“I don't mind,” Grantaire says. “We can watch _Veep_ and you can complain that it's basically just a C-SPAN blooper reel.”

The idea of sitting still for long enough to watch an episode of television, even a short one, even a funny one, makes Enjolras bristle.

“I already took an Ambien,” he says. “I'll be out soon. Seriously, I'd be shitty company anyway.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says. He sits down next to Enjolras on the bed. “I'm recording all day tomorrow, so I won't be able to hang out, but I have some awesome sightseeing recommendations for you if you don't want to sit around all day.”

“I'm doing video editing stuff for 'Polis,'” Enjolras says. “We're finishing taping in Japan after New Year's.”

“How soon after?”

“Like—right after. A couple of days.”

“Oh.” Grantaire frowns. “So I only have you to myself for like, one more week?”

“We'll only be there for a week,” Enjolras says. “Then I'll be here, and we're technically supposed to be on vacation for the month after, so I'll be all yours except for a couple of trips to L.A.”

“How are you going to handle a whole month?” Grantaire says, stretching out next to Enjolras and ruining his carefully tousled hair. “You're bored and it's barely been a week.”

Enjolras doesn't want to think about it. He'll write a lot, probably. They have awards shows to prep for, too, performances to rehearse, Sank Amy-related things to take up his time.

“Guess what?” he says, trying to distract himself.

“What?”

“It's our anniversary tomorrow.”

Grantaire inhales sharply, then laughs. “I can't believe you actually remember the date. Actually, no, I can definitely believe it.”

Enjolras leans over to kiss him. Grantaire tastes like he's been pregaming, but Enjolras didn't even notice. It's like background noise now, he thinks, the clinking of Grantaire's bottle against his glass, the sound of a lighter clicking. 

“I love you,” Grantaire says. “I have something for you.”

“Wait, you remembered?”

“Such little faith,” Grantaire says, smiling. “But yeah, no, it's not a gift.” He digs around the drawer in his nightstand, finds something small, and drops it into Enjolras's palm. 

“Keys,” Enjolras says, closing his hand around them.

“The square one is for the gate outside, the big one is for the front door of the building, the gold one is for this apartment,” Grantaire says, wrapping a hand around Enjolras's. “It doesn't—you know. It doesn't mean anything other than what you want it to mean. I don't know. You can leave your towel here. Even if you don't want to be here forever, it's here for when you want to be.”

Enjolras wants it to mean everything. He brushes his lips against Grantaire's knuckles. 

“Thank you,” he says.

“Happy anniversary,” Grantaire says, and lingers for a moment longer. “I don't have to go,” he says. 

“Like I said,” Enjolras says. “I'm going to fall asleep soon anyway.”

“If you don't, text me,” Grantaire says. “I'll come right home.”

“I will.”

“Promise,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras looks up into his eyes, dilated pupils, ring of thick lashes, dark smudges of eyeliner.

“You look really hot.”

Grantaire laughs. “I didn't think so,” he says. 

“Go have fun,” Enjolras says. “Stop worrying about me.”

“Good night,” Grantaire says, kissing Enjolras's cheek and leaving at last. 

When he leaves, Enjolras puts his guitar away and spends over an hour tossing, turning, and staring at the ceiling before finally sinking into some restless approximation of sleep.

He doesn't notice when Grantaire comes in, but when Enjolras next wakes up, Grantaire is there, smelling like sweat and shampoo at once. 

Enjolras snuggles closer and closes his eyes.

*

Grantaire tries. He really does. He takes Enjolras to the Museum of Modern Art, the Met, all his favorite restaurants, Zucotti Park, Grant's tomb, Hamilton's tomb, _Hamilton_. They spend their anniversary raucously cheering songs about the American revolution. And Enjolras loves it all, but he can't sit still and he can't sleep, and Grantaire can't figure out what's wrong.

“You know what he's like,” Combeferre says when they're all over at the triplets' apartment and Enjolras is distracted, arguing with Joly over the melody of their collaboration. “He doesn't know how to relax. He only sleeps well when he's writing and recording, and sometimes not even then.”

“Does he not—talk about this with someone?” Grantaire says.

Combeferre shrugs. “There's only so much therapy and meds can actually fix if he wants to be somewhere else all the time.”

That stings, and Combeferre must realize it, because he shakes his head. 

“I don't mean away from you. I just mean actually _doing_ something, you know?”

“I mean, we still have to record his song,” Grantaire says. “Do you think that'd be a good thing for him to do?”

“Probably,” Combeferre says. “Do you two—you know. Work well together?”

“We've only really done it over the phone thus far, and it's okay,” Grantaire says. “We have very different styles, but that doesn't mean they're irreconcilable, at least I don't think so, like if we were in the studio together—all of us, Sardonic Colon and him and a producer—I think we'd be able to work it out. I just—I hope it's not all a mess, you know? Like, I hope it still sounds like us but also sounds like him and that it accomplishes what all of us set out to accomplish.”

He stops. Combeferre is staring at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Combeferre says. He has this way of only partially raising his eyebrow, a facial tic so slight it's barely noticeable except that it changes his entire expression, half amusement and half surprise. “You sound like him.”

“What?”

“You didn't before.” Combeferre passes Grantaire his vape, and Grantaire accepts. “I'm sorry if I came off like a dick, by the way. I—fighting with Enjolras wasn't your fault.”

That seems unlikely, Grantaire thinks, considering everything they fought about was directly related to Grantaire, but he nods, coughs even though they're vaping. 

“We're good,” he says. 

“Good,” Combeferre says.

*

When Grantaire thinks about it, he gets dizzy, but just a few years ago they were playing at bars not far from his current apartment to crowds that barely paid them any attention until they started writing their own songs, and even then, it was for five dollar covers that all went to the bar and free drinks if they were lucky. And now they're recording at a studio Stars has bought specifically for this purpose, for Sardonic Colon and a couple of other New York-based bands to record. They have two acclaimed producers working with them, one a dreadlocked white man whom Enjolras has apparently hated since Sank Amy recorded their own last album, the other a tall Asian woman who wears a wide-brimmed felt hat and has produced for everyone from the Foo Fighters to Say Anything.

Not to mention one of the most famous popstars in the world is recording a song with them.

Well—Grantaire calls it recording, but it's different. It's like Enjolras is part of the band, and not just part of the band but one of the loudest voices there. It's not like when they featured Brendon Urie on a song and he sent them his notes the week before, came in, recorded his parts, had a drink with all of them, and left. With Enjolras, it takes multiple long days, multiple rewrites, revisions, Enjolras irritated at himself and everyone irritated at Enjolras.

“I don't know,” Enjolras says on the second day of working on the collab. “Can we do that part again? But Musichetta, can you be just, like, half an octave lower? I just think—”

“We arranged the song the other way,” Joly says. “But I mean—we can always alter it—”

Musichetta sings it. Grantaire takes a surreptitious sip from his flask. Musichetta's voice sounds good with Enjolras harmonizing—it's unexpected and weird, but Grantaire likes it anyway, and Enjolras is right about the half octave.

“That verse would sound better if the lyrics had a little more punch.”

“I agree,” Bossuet says. “Grantaire, do you—?”

“I'll work on it tonight. Nothing's coming to me right now.”

“Do you mind—can I see the sheet? What if we—”

“Sure,” Grantaire says. 

“You didn't even let me—”

“No, I mean—we can always go back. Just make the changes, and we'll try it that way, and if they don't work, we'll think of something else.” 

“Right.” Enjolras frowns, takes the pen Joly offers him, crosses out several lines. 

He has a kind of frantic perfectionism to him, scribbling things out and then scribbling out the scribbles without pausing to read. It's nothing like Sardonic Colon's usual process, and they've been at it all day, Enjolras tweaking parts at random instead of going in their normal order. Sardonic Colon are humoring him, taking it well enough, but it's like he's recording with Sank Amy, who are markedly different in their process than Sardonic Colon.

“Let's try it like this,” Musichetta says. “We can tweak later, let's just try and get something down.”

Grantaire steps into the booth, turns his back to them, sips from his flask again, tucks it back into his coat. Bossuet gives him a look, but no one else seems to notice.

Eponine plays the beat she recorded earlier, and then Musichetta, Grantaire, and Enjolras sing their respective parts. The song feels bloated with all three of them, though, overloaded—“What if we try it with Grantaire doing the verses, Musichetta doing the first chorus, and me on the last one and echoing on the last few lines?” “No, what if Musichetta does all the choruses, you come in like you're responding to Grantaire, and—” “Let's try it both ways,” Musichetta says, and Grantaire tries to remember the instructions he's been given even if the words have started to sound empty to him, empty and clunky, heavy in his mouth.

Afterward, Enjolras is bouncing off the walls, all over the place, can sit still even less than usual.

“That was good, right?” he says. “Productive, like? Great?”

Grantaire thinks about Chicago, Enjolras playing piano in that bar, capable of doing so much when he isn't trying to change the world. He wishes _that_ were the Enjolras who showed up to record with Sardonic Colon.

“Sure,” Grantaire says.

He's exhausted, but they have to be at a club for some other Stars band's album release party tonight. He does a bump earlier than he normally would, lining it up on the rhyming dictionary he never uses but of which Enjolras is surprisingly fond.

“I'm just glad you're going to be excited tonight for once,” Grantaire says, blinking at the burn in his nose. “Enjolras hyper as shit at a party? Sign me the fuck up.”

“I mean, I'd rather be working, obviously.” Enjolras pours himself a drink. A moment later, Grantaire realizes it's only water. “But it should be good, right? I haven't gone out in a while, and Combeferre will be there, right?”

“And Eponine. Triplets are elsewhere.”

“I think it's so gross that you call them the triplets,” Enjolras says, sitting down next to Grantaire with his notebook. He's angled so Grantaire can't see its contents. 

“What else are we supposed to call them?” Grantaire says, standing to refill his flask. “What are you working on?”

“Just toying with lyrics from earlier.”

Grantaire doesn't bother to peek. He chooses vodka because it always goes straight to his head.

“Hey,” Enjolras says. There's the sound of him shifting, and then he's there next to Grantaire in the kitchen, fingers beneath Grantaire's chin. It's an old gesture, but it's it a comforting one, and Grantaire watches as Enjolras fills a glass with water.

“Drink,” Enjolras says. Grantaire obeys. “We have a long night ahead of us.”

“You do,” Grantaire says. “I'm just going to do coke and have fun.”

“I'll take care of you,” Enjolras says, turning back to the sink to rinse the glass.

Grantaire exhales through his nose, closes his eyes. He feels like the room is vibrating around him, and he can't tell if it comes from anxiety or drugs or something else, something worse.

But Enjolras is here, and Enjolras will take care of him. Grantaire steps closer, brushes Enjolras's hair aside and presses against him, kissing his neck, holding both their bodies together, pushing Enjolras lightly against the sink.

“I love having you here,” Grantaire says. “I love having you in my apartment, in New York, somewhere stable, somewhere real.”

Enjolras groans as Grantaire tangles his fingers in Enjolras's hair and pulls his head backward so he can kiss him. It's sloppy, lacking in any finesse or skill, but Enjolras is out of breath already, and Grantaire slips his other hand up Enjolras's shirt to tweak a nipple.

“Fuck,” Enjolras says, so soft it's almost just a breath, and Grantaire laughs.

“Later,” Grantaire promises. “Should I call an uber?”

“Cosette is sending a car,” Enjolras says, still facing away from Grantaire. “You're wild, you know that?”

“No, you are,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras turns back to him, smiling. He drags Grantaire forward by the front of his jacket, and Grantaire lets him.

*

“We never got to dance,” Grantaire says.

He's high and drunk, but he's not sloppy yet, has had just enough that his eyes and cheeks are bright, that his smiles come frequently and easily. Not for the first time, Enjolras wishes Grantaire found him enough without any drugs, but then, it's not like Grantaire does any when it's just the two of them.

“This isn't exactly what I pictured,” Enjolras says. He casts around for Combeferre, but he's with Eponine talking to someone that looks suspiciously like one of the members of Patron-Minette. “Sweaty grinding in a nightclub? Our first dance? My parents would be ashamed.”

“All the more reason to do it,” Grantaire says, winding his fingers through Enjolras's and tugging him away from the booth he's been tucked into for most of the night.

“What if someone gets a picture?”

“We'll explain it away,” Grantaire says. “Whatever. Does anyone think you're not straight?”

“Some people know you aren't.”

“Fuck it,” Grantaire says. “We just won't act couple-y if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“It's not about that,” Enjolras says. “You know it isn't. We just got back from Dubai, which is pretty liberal and would still have had me deported for kissing you.”

“Well, you've done your Middle East tour.” Grantaire wraps both arms around Enjolras, presses them together until their hips are lined up. “You're good, right?”

“We've only just started,” Enjolras says. “I mean—I don't want to be publicly closeted forever, but it _does_ make some things easier.”

Grantaire doesn't respond, his head dipping to the space between Enjolras's neck and his shoulder, all warm breath. His hair tickles the underside of Enjolras's chin.

“I do want people to know,” Enjolras says, unsure what to do with his hands. “You know I do. It's just not—”

“You're right,” Grantaire says. “Sorry to inconvenience you.” 

“Don't start,” Enjolras says. 

“You said when you got back from the Middle East—”

“Fine,” Enjolras says. “Fucking—fine.” He digs his phone out of his pocket, wraps an arm around Grantaire's waist, and takes a picture of himself kissing his cheek. “Happy?” he says, showing Grantaire as he uploads it to Instagram.

“Cosette is going to be so pissed at you,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras considers it and decides he'll deal with that problem when it comes. “Are you good?”

Grantaire shrugs, but he plucks Enjolras's phone out of his hand and slides it back into Enjolras's back pocket. His hand stays there for a moment, and he tugs Enjolras's hips forward, pressing up against Enjolras's front and swaying to the beat. 

“I'm not stupid, you know,” Grantaire says, which is one of the most annoying things Grantaire says but also something that seems to come up every time he's fucked up and in a bad mood. “I know you didn't actually out us to anyone.”

Enjolras stays quiet for a while, waiting for Grantaire to relax. 

“Do you understand why I'm hesitant?” Enjolras says. 

“Yeah.” Grantaire's pressing is less aggressive now, his arms looped loosely around Enjolras's waist, head on Enjolras's chest, more of a high school slow dance than the angry tugging he started out with. “It's just frustrating, thinking that it has to be weird and scary and dangerous when we do this, but if it was like, you and Taylor Swift—”

“I don't think she's into blonds,” Enjolras says.

“Jesus, how do you _know_ that? You don't know who Neutral Milk Hotel are, but you know Taylor Swift's type?”

“I spend a lot of time in Courfeyrac's company, and she's all over the news all the time—if anything, my knowledge of her love life is an indictment of the media—”

“Why don't we just do that?” Grantaire says.

“What?”

“The media thing. The Anderson Cooper thing. We just—we don't tell anyone, but everyone knows. Do you think that would work?”

“The half-closeted thing?”

“Yeah. We can go to events together as best friends, like Rihanna does, and then people will just—just let them make their own assumptions.”

“I didn't realize this bothered you so much.”

“It doesn't,” Grantaire says. “I just.”

Enjolras doesn't know what he's talking about, so he pulls Grantaire closer, like if he just squeezes hard enough he can wring him, spongelike, of all his insecurities. He doesn't know if it works, but Grantaire stills against him, and Enjolras can feel each of his inhales and exhales. 

“I wish we could just leave,” Grantaire says. “Let's do it. Seriously. Book a flight to New Zealand, find a nice cottage somewhere by a stream or a lake, tend—sheep or whatever.”

Enjolras can picture it, Grantaire with his jeans rolled up, wading, skipping rocks on a lake, his dark curls falling over his face, both of them suntanned and sunburnt again, the easiness of it all. Hats to block the sun. One of those big hooks shepherds have. A dog, maybe. He hasn't ever had a dog before. No one would have been around to take care of it, not in his childhood and not now. But they can hire someone when they get back, or they can take it on tour with them.

“Okay,” Enjolras says.

“You'd hate it. You'd want to leave immediately.”

“It wouldn't be permanent,” Enjolras says. “Two weeks. A month.”

Grantaire stiffens. For a moment, it feels like it did before, when they were in North America and Grantaire would take offense at everything Enjolras said, either twist Enjolras's words to pick a fight or turn his shoulder, get a little more cold, a little more distant, until finally Enjolras lost control and shoved Grantaire up against a bus in New Hampshire.

Enjolras feels much more in control now. He pulls Grantaire closer, if that's possible, fuck whoever sees them, and pretends that they're not here in this club surrounded by people who half-know Grantaire and have never met Enjolras.

“Let's go home,” Enjolras says.

“Okay.” Grantaire's voice is so small that Enjolras is half-surprised when Grantaire has it together enough to request an Uber. 

They don't speak when they get home, but Grantaire showers and curves around Enjolras in bed possessively, and Enjolras closes his eyes and thinks that even though it isn't an idyllic New Zealand pasture, it's enough.

*

It's unseasonably warm in New York, which Stars is trying to take full advantage of by having its biggest acts play outdoor shows on New Year's weekend. Sank Amy do a lazy, drawn out set late enough that everyone is in a coat, all of them exhausted but several injected with energy via cocaine courtesy of Grantaire.

“This song is dedicated to a special someone,” Courfeyrac announces. “On behalf of Enjolras, Marius, and me.”

“And me!” Jehan shouts into his mic.

“And Jehan,” Courfeyrac says, grinning and then actually blushing.

They play a cover of “The Rock Show,” and the crowd goes wild. Grantaire isn't convinced they would have prior to Sank Amy's touring with Sardonic Colon, but here they are, Sank Amy fans, sixteen year olds singing a Blink song that came out when they were literally still embryos.

Grantaire loves it. He hasn't seen Sank Amy play in forever, not since their album release party in Chicago, and they're as electric as ever despite their exhaustion. They go full acoustic for this show, sitting down except for when Enjolras stands to preach, which—being Enjolras—he does often. 

Enjolras is already getting antsy from being in one place for so long, which Grantaire never even realized was an issue. For him, touring is an inconvenience; if Grantaire could, he'd teleport from place to place and sleep in his bed in Brooklyn every night. He loves traveling, of course he does, but the long bus rides and limited freedom have never sat well with him. 

But Enjolras is different. He's restless, impatient, constantly moving forward, desperate to change the world and frustrated at his only slightly successful attempts at doing so. It's been two weeks, and he's clearly sick of New York, eager to shoot scenes from Sank Amy's next video in Tokyo. They've already started, apparently, shots in Athens, London, and Paris while they were in Europe and some video in New York, too.

Enjolras asked Grantaire to come with him, but Grantaire turned him down. He knows that he, too, will be restless soon, eager to do something, eager to move, but for the time being he's still enjoying being in New York, being home. Cosette has already informed Sardonic Colon of a month-long East Asia tour to promote their next album, and so Grantaire isn't too bothered about going to Tokyo now, even if it means he and Enjolras will—for one week—be separated. 

Grantaire tells himself it doesn't matter, that Enjolras would be working all day in Tokyo anyway and they'd never get to spend time together, that they've survived more time apart. For some reason, it feels different from the other times, but he tries not to dwell on it.

When Sank Amy's set ends, encore and all, Grantaire claps and cheers with everyone else.

*

Sardonic Colon's set is different. Sardonic Colon's _crowd_ is different. They've always drawn a diverse set of people, but it shows more in New York than anywhere else—there are hardcore kids, but it's not as white as a Modern Baseball show might be, and there are reformed emo kids and fourth wavers, but there are regular New York teenagers too, black and brown kids making up just as much of the audience as the white ones.

Only three of their songs will air tonight, but they get a whole hour long set, and it's been long enough since Grantaire played for a crowd that he relishes every minute of it, hopping around the stage and crooning “Miami Baby” and winking at the place in the crowd where he knows Sank Amy are sitting.

They finish to cheers and applause and screams, and Grantaire flings his guitar pick into the crowd, and yeah, he thinks, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

*

Recording with Enjolras saps all the fun out of making music.

Grantaire hates to admit it, but it's true: something that was once a release, an enjoyable activity, something that caused stress only in his own personal artistic perfectionism, has become a daily mess of arguments, Enjolras rewriting and rerecording and saying stupid things like, “Maybe you shouldn't drink while we're trying to get it right.”

But it doesn't come to a head until Grantaire disagrees with him.

For all his frenetic energy, Enjolras has been mostly right about the changes he's been making. Sure, the song sounds more poppy than a typical Sardonic Colon song, but he's good at what he does. He can make a song sound good. But his goal, because this is _Enjolras_ , isn't always to make the song sound good. 

They leave the studio, the triplets getting into an Uber while Eponine meets Combeferre at a nearby bar, flanked by Stars-sanctioned bodyguards. Grantaire, who lives only a few blocks away from the studio, managed to convince Stars to let him go bodyguard-less unless he's at a party or something, and even then he usually doesn't tell any Stars people where he's going unless it's a Stars party. 

Enjolras doesn't want to stop talking about the song, having found sudden purpose: “What if we change the melody just _slightly_? Or stop the music before that last line?”

“I actually think we should stop there,” Grantaire says. “It sounds better the way it was before than with that tweak.”

“Sure, sure,” Enjolras says, nodding vigorously. Grantaire wonders if someone told him nodding would appease dissidents during a freshman writing seminar or something. “I just think it'd be more politically effective if—”

“It's not about being politically effective. It's about making a good song,” and there it is again, that old argument, “I mean, giving this one a political spin was part of the compromise, but you're refusing to give anything up.”

“This isn't a compromise,” Enjolras says. “It was supposed to be a collaboration.”

“Yeah, a _co_ llaboration. That means everyone's input is valuable, not just yours. That's why you need to compromise. We reach a midpoint between good song and political song, and we stay there.”

“We can't compromise on _this_!” Enjolras says, a half-shout that, were it still daytime, might have drawn stares. “The whole purpose of this was—I mean, what's the _point_?”

Grantaire shrinks away. “I knew it,” he says. “I fucking knew it. This whole time—”

Enjolras follows him up the stairs to his apartment.

“Grantaire,” he says, voice carefully level. “I just don't want to put my name on something that's—it's—”

“What? Not politically expedient and therefore automatically bad?” Grantaire opens the door to his apartment and immediately goes for the bar in his kitchen. “You know the rest of our work isn't political, right?” He's thinking of Tariq, the Moroccan student in—Budapest? Amsterdam? He can't remember. _I was drowning in my political identity. I thought I would suffocate._ “Our fans don't come to us for that. That isn't who we are, and that's _on purpose_.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that's why this song _should_ be political.”

“Like some kind of awful bait and switch?” Grantaire says. “We gave you the politics, okay? But we can't just go all the way, do whatever you want, until it doesn't sound like us anymore. It doesn't even sound _good_ anymore.”

“I think Sardonic Colon could benefit from a song like this,” Enjolras says.

“Why? The rest of our stuff isn't good enough for you?”

“That's not what I'm saying.”

“What _are_ you saying?”

They stare at each other, breathing hard. Grantaire's hand holds an empty glass and, Grantaire is displeased to note, is shaking. 

“Maybe we need,” Enjolras says, then stops.

“I knew it,” Grantaire says. “It's all you care about, isn't it? The fucking—revolution, or whatever.”

Enjolras takes a step back, stares at Grantaire like Grantaire has just slapped him in the face. _Good_ , Grantaire thinks viciously.

“I'm going out,” Grantaire says. “It's pretty apparent you don't want to be here. You don't have to humor me. I'm not going to break when you leave.”

Enjolras, arms petulantly crossed, glares at Grantaire without response.

*

When Grantaire gets home that night, Enjolras's things are gone. It feels eerie, like he was never there, like Grantaire has stepped back to a time before Enjolras.

He climbs into his bed and stares at the ceiling until he passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grantaire quotes "[ulysses](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45392)" by alfred lord tennyson. sank amy cover [the rock show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7hhDINyBP0) by blink-182.
> 
> thinking about the time I said "20k words all at once" and laughing
> 
> only one more chapter after this (for real this time)!
> 
> please please please leave a comment! also, hit me up on my (infrequently updated) [fandom tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com) or my (totally vanilla) [main blog](http://osaudade.tumblr.com)! thank you so much for reading <3


	7. new york, pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick warning for very very brief mentions of suicide in this chapter (no one does it or considers doing it, but there are mentions that might be trigger-y for some people)

****

brooklyn

****

new york → tokyo → new york

_i know the world's a broken bone / but melt your headaches, call it home_

—

Inhale, count to five. Hold it, count to seven. Exhale, count to eight.

Alone in a hotel room, Enjolras realizes his faded black t-shirt is actually a Sardonic Colon shirt, a distressed white _s:_ on the front. 

He takes the shirt off and curls up in a ball and closes his eyes and practices his CBT breathing exercises.

*

Grantaire feels at once hollow and brittle, less like porcelain and more like fake crystal. He sits down carefully on the chair in his bedroom, leans back, looks up at the ceiling. He's annoyed, now, at all the exposed brick, an irritation that lingers just on the edges of his consciousness until it's all he can think about.

“I don't understand why you had to go for this trendy, tacky bullshit,” he tells Cosette, looking up “how to get rid of exposed brick” on Google. “Like—if I wanted to live inside a fucking hut, I would've built it myself?”

“Would you, though?” Cosette says. “Listen, Marius and I are going to be in New York this weekend because Sank Amy are flying out of JFK. Do you want to get dinner? The four of us?”

“I'll call you later,” Grantaire says, hanging up, leaning back in his chair and glaring at his computer, which is offering him the services of someone who will put plaster on his wall for him.

Cosette texts him once— _wait what happened? everything ok? please confirm—i am your boss & do not like surprises_—but then he's left alone for the rest of the evening, and because he's alone in his apartment, and because he's Grantaire, and because he's a rockstar now apparently, Grantaire spends the entire evening drinking and pitying himself, poking out notes on an old keyboard he keeps in the kitchen he never uses.

He feels oddly empty, and even the alcohol doesn't fill him up, and he can't even think of anything good to write, which means all he can do is glare at his television-less wall in impotent anger.

A text from Enjolras: _i misspoke & i'm sorry. i love you._

Grantaire ignores him and goes to bed.

*

New York alone isn't like New York with Grantaire.

It's dull and crowded and no one cares about anyone else. Enjolras hates it here, hates the skyscrapers on one side of town and the sickeningly bright lights on the other, hates the real estate prices, hates that the hotel he's staying at costs the same amount per night as rent would cost in an area with a lower cost of living. He hates that everyone here is rich unless they get off the train on the far ends, the distant stops. He hates the gentrification, how visible the lines are between “formerly black and brown neighborhoods” and “presently black and brown neighborhoods.” He hates the segregation. He hates the subway. He hates the stupid fucking blue coffee cups with the stupid fucking fake Greek writing on them. 

Most of all he hates his hotel, he hates how big the room is, he hates that it's probably nicer than some apartments. He hates that it's somewhere his father would probably stay if he didn't own an ugly brownstone in the ugly Upper East Side and an ugly apartment in the ugly Upper West Side. He hates that it's the one Cosette picked for him—shouldn't she _know better_ , shouldn't _everyone_ know better? Why are people like this? It's tragic, a fucking tragedy, what people do to each other and at each other's expense. Who decided to build this hotel and price it this way? Who lived here before? Who lived here before that? Why don't _they_ matter? 

(Combeferre texts him: _what are you up to today?_ , which means he knows nothing; Marius texts him: _everything ok? cosette says you're staying at a hotel in midtown?_ , which means he knows everything; Bossuet texts him: _we're working on other stuff for a few days so we can get back to 'thanksgiving' with fresh ears + eyes—let's pick it up again when you're back from japan? we should have a demo by then_ , which could mean anything.)

(Enjolras ignores them all. Not, he thinks angrily, because he doesn't care about them, because he _does_ , because they're his _friends_ , and he _loves them_ , and fuck, he's so sick of having this questioned—)

With nothing to do, impotent with displaced rage, he flops down on the bed and turns on the TV.

Nothing. CNN is unwatchable, of course; it's too late for CSPAN to be anything but infomercials and reruns; Fox is vomit-worthy; MSNBC is laughable; every HBO channel is playing a movie he's watched on an airplane in the past year (Grantaire, shoulder brushing Enjolras's, _god, you are so predictable_ ); MTV is playing—for once—music videos (not Sardonic Colon or Sank Amy but close enough, a band full of white guys styled to look ambiguously ethnic, god, Enjolras _hates_ the music industry); kids' shows he can't pay attention to; adult dramas he doesn't care about; adult comedies that don't make him laugh; adult cartoons he doesn't understand; a rerun of a _Daily Show_ episode he's already seen; a sports game (he hates sports, he thinks savagely, glaring at the Yankees as if they personally have done him harm); a cooking show.

He turns it off.

He wants to call Grantaire.

What would Enjolras say if he called Grantaire? “TV has really gone to shit,” or maybe, “It really sucks when America's main form of escapism completely fucking fails you,” or maybe, “What does it say about our culture that the best news source we can produce is sensationalist, fear-mongering, moral panic-inducing trash?”

That sounds more like him. 

He checks his phone. Grantaire hasn't responded to his text. Grantaire probably won't respond to his text.

And that's another thing—who is Grantaire to say Enjolras doesn't care about him? Doesn't he know? How can he not know? Doesn't he feel it too, this wild burning, this awe-inspiring fire that threatens to consume him whole? When will Grantaire be able to separate Enjolras's constructive criticism about a song that's supposed to be revolutionary from Enjolras's feelings toward Grantaire? What is _wrong_ with him, that he can't separate them? 

Or is it that there's something wrong with Enjolras? Why is it he can barely get a sentence out without setting Grantaire off, making Grantaire twist into himself, making him fall apart? And he senses that it's happening all the time—less now than before, but still now, and Enjolras doesn't understand it and it isn't _fair_ , isn't fair that Grantaire will willfully misunderstand Enjolras when Enjolras misspeaks but won't believe Enjolras when Enjolras tells him the _truth_ , it's just complete bullshit and it isn't worth the fucking stress, maybe, like maybe if Enjolras spent all the energy he expelled dealing with Grantaire ( _dealing with isn't quite right_ , says a voice in his head, which Enjolras promptly ignores) on something more worthwhile, like actually—

But that's a train of thought he won't allow himself to follow. He's angry and he feels guilty, but he wouldn't trade it, he thinks, he wouldn't trade it for anything, and that in itself is a terrifying thought.

But _why doesn't Grantaire care_? It's an even more destructive train of thought, but Enjolras is in a destructive mood. Enjolras thinks—thought? _thinks_ —there's some mess of cynicism and fear of disappointment that prevents Grantaire from outwardly hoping for revolution, but there has to be something inside him that does—but what if he's wrong? What if Grantaire doesn't see a point in any of it, what if he thinks Enjolras really and truly is wasting his life? Worse, what if he's right? What if this world, this terrible, CNN-driven world, isn't worth saving? What if it's already lost?

Defeated, Enjolras opens Instagram on his phone and searches for Grantaire's name.

*

At first, Grantaire thinks he's going to spend his Friday night in, maybe watch a movie, try to decompress, think a little, write a little, just find some kind of release for all the tension corded through his body. He has invites to several parties, including one from Montparnasse ( _might be good to reconnect—Claq misses you_ ), but he ignores them all in favor of hanging around his apartment, cleaning what's there to clean. Other than his instruments—a few guitars and a keyboard—he barely has any things. It's odd, this blank, empty apartment, and despite his being here for a few months, it hasn't started to feel like home.

Or—it did, and then it didn't. When both of their things were strewn about, it was better; the clutter made it more real, more like a place two people actually lived in and didn't just use as a kind of halfway house between tours. Now it's all Grantaire's stuff, and most of that is just clothing, and he sent out his hamper to be washed and dried and folded that morning so even that isn't here.

The doorbell rings: his laundry is here. Grantaire thanks the person delivering it, gives him a tip, and goes to lift the basket before stopping in his tracks. 

Right there on top is Enjolras's towel. It's a vivid shade of red that his laundry service hasn't faded, and Grantaire stares at it for a long moment before picking it up and pressing it against his face and inhaling.

It smells like laundry, but Grantaire can imagine that it doesn't, that it smells like Enjolras, who doesn't wear cologne—he just smells like a person smells, Grantaire supposes, deodorant and sweat. He's the only person Grantaire's ever met who has a noble reason for using Axe—“Unilever used to have a factory in the West Bank, but they've moved it, and it's better than anything Procter and Gamble own,” which means no Gillette. 

Grantaire can't even tell if he's still pissed. He knows there's _something_ there, some unrelenting irritation and hurt, something that needs to be put back into place—but he can't muster up that burning anger at Enjolras's criticism of the song.

He emails his band Enjolras's criticisms, does a bunch of cocaine, and answers Montparnasse's text.

*

Enjolras isn't one for vices or self-destruction, but it's a Friday night and he's stretched out in his bed in his awful hotel room again with Instagram open to his own profile.

He isn't surprised that there are people—shippers, Courfeyrac gleefully informed him after their first album blew up and people started “shipping” him with Courfeyrac and Combeferre and everyone else in his band. (Courfeyrac's favorite: Enjolras with Marius. It's probably the most nonsensical of them all considering he and Marius don't actually have anything in common.)—commenting things about Grantaire on half his pictures. He is surprised that somehow, half his pictures include Grantaire. There are a few of Sardonic Colon shows from when they were on tour together—one so early Enjolras is surprised to see it, Grantaire before they were together, before Enjolras knew all his sharp edges could be softened, before he knew what they concealed; one from Prague of them both at brunch, Grantaire sipping from a champagne flute and framed by Jehan on his other side and Combeferre across him; Grantaire in that piano bar in Chicago, a night Enjolras hasn't stopped wishing he could've lived in forever, the softness of Grantaire's smile, the carefree piano.

And then—there's an odd sensation in Enjolras's stomach: it flutters. 

Butterflies. 

Still, after a year, butterflies. 

And it cuts through the sheer acidic anxiety and hurt that had been flooding him until Enjolras exhales and decides fuck it, fuck it, he'll fix it, it's worth it, it's worth fixing, he has to fix it.

Grantaire isn't answering his texts, so he checks Grantaire's Snapchat, and sure enough, there it is in his story: a party in the Meatpacking district, a clubby part of Manhattan toward which Grantaire has expressed a great deal of disdain.

Enjolras texts Cosette to ask about it, and she sends him the name of the club a moment later.

_can you get me in?_

_it's a stars party, and you are the most famous person signed to stars. i think you'll be fine._

The cab ride to the club is both too slow and too fast, and Enjolras spends the entire thing bobbing his knee up and down in the back, chewing his lip, his fingernails, the insides of his cheek.

He hates clubs, and this one is no different, even worse than Grantaire's preferred Brooklyn clubs. Everyone here makes too much money; every surface is black and slick and shiny; the music is awful and thumping and loud, too heavy, too much bass, like the DJ is playing specifically to people who have taken too much MDMA. 

Grantaire is in the VIP section, babbling drunkenly and bitterly to the group gathered around him: “People always say they'd want to see who comes to your funeral, but why bother? Of course your friends come to your funeral, of course family wants to see you that way, preserved, so they can remember you as—still, sterile, dead. The way to know your real friends—who shows up at the hospital after your suicide attempt, who holds your hand when they draw blood, who takes the laces out of your shoes—no one. Nurses.” 

Someone next to him is scrawling down notes, but otherwise the people there look vaguely familiar: Montparnasse, as ridiculously good-looking as always; Claquesous, the drummer or something from Patron-Minette, arm flung around Grantaire's shoulders; someone Enjolras has seen on magazine covers; one of the college friends Enjolras briefly met.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says. “Hey. Grantaire.” 

Grantaire doesn't move his head, but his eyes shift to meet Enjolras's. Enjolras charges forward, ready to throw Grantaire over his shoulder if he has to, but Grantaire smiles. 

“Enjolras,” he half-slurs, grabbing limply for Enjolras's wrist. Enjolras winds his fingers through Grantaire's and tugs, and the person taking notes frowns at that, writes faster. Enjolras finds it difficult to care. 

“Let's get out of here,” Enjolras says.

“Why?” Grantaire says, but he stands up of his own volition, follows Enjolras back out of the club, successfully figures out which shiny slick black car is meant for him. “Why are you here?”

Enjolras reaches across the back seat of the car and brushes Grantaire's hair out of his face. Grantaire's eyes are half-closed, and he looks so, so young. Enjolras wants to talk, left his hotel room because he wants to talk, but Grantaire is so drunk his eyes can barely focus, and Enjolras sighs.

“You took care of me once,” Enjolras says. “I'm just returning the favor.”

“I,” Grantaire says, but even this drunk doesn't seem to want to say whatever it is. “Thanks.”

*

Grantaire wakes up with the taste of alcohol still in the back of his throat, his least favorite type of hangover. The sun, which so often cast a soft glow on Enjolras's face in hotel rooms in South America, feels harsh and unforgiving as it peeks through Grantaire's blinds. His mouth is dry, and he finds that when he sits up, he is so dizzy that he immediately wants to lie back down.

He reaches over to his nightstand for an Advil and finds that there's a glass of water and a bottle of Gatorade there. He drains the water and sips at the Gatorade while he forces himself to get up, stumble into his bathroom, and brush his teeth.

In the shower, Grantaire finds that his vision still swims if he closes his eyes. He wants to throw up, but his body doesn't seem to want to cooperate. He drinks more Gatorade, dries off, wraps a towel around his waist, and goes to look for his laptop in his living room.

He finds his laptop, but there's something else, too, or rather, someone else, a tall blond curled up on the couch in his jeans and a faded Sardonic Colon t-shirt (one of their first ever, and Grantaire wonders where he got it before realizing it must have been his) and just starting to wake up. 

“You could've slept in the bed with me,” Grantaire says. “This can't have been comfortable.”

Enjolras blinks sleep from his eyes and looks up at him. “I didn't want you to think I was taking advantage of you.”

“Come on,” Grantaire says. “Like you'd ever—”

“Not like that,” Enjolras says, moving his legs to make space for Grantaire. “Emotionally.”

Grantaire sits down on the farthest end of the couch and opens his laptop. “What, were you scared we'd wake up spooning or something?” 

“Something like that.”

Grantaire doesn't chance a look at him. “Thank you. For—taking care of me last night. I needed it.”

“Well,” Enjolras says, reaching for the glasses on the coffee table. It's odd to think how strange a sight they used to be since Enjolras only wears them early in the morning and late at night, but Grantaire has spent so much time with him since Enjolras got to New York that they've almost completely taken over the way he thinks of Enjolras in his head. “I owed you one.”

“No, you didn't,” Grantaire says. “You were acting out of the kindness of your heart, and you know it.”

“If _you_ think so, it must be true.”

Grantaire ignores him and navigates to Seamless. “Do you want breakfast?”

“What are you getting?”

“Eggs and pancakes. Possibly pastries. A bagel and cream cheese. Sausages.”

“Okay.”

Grantaire is keenly aware of the last time he and Enjolras sat like this, Grantaire in a towel, Enjolras unsure what he's done wrong but desperate to make up for it, and thinks it's different this time. Enjolras's golden glow has faded, leaving behind it a person with genuine flaws, a pitted scar an inch away from his ear, eyelashes that are too blond, glasses so stupid even he knows it, terrible dress sense, a fundamental inability to interpret other people's emotions anywhere he is involved.

And yet.

“Okay what?” Grantaire says.

“Oh,” Enjolras says, blinking. “Sorry. I'll have a bagel too.”

“Cream cheese? Or is that too much of a luxury for you?”

Enjolras stares at him, wide blue eyes the only color in the paleness of his face. “I—do they have lox?”

Despite himself, despite his throbbing headache and his lingering hurt at Enjolras's remarks, Grantaire smiles.

They wait for their food in silence, and when it comes Enjolras goes to get it, and then they sit and start to eat together.

“This is really good,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire sighs. 

“Are we gonna do this?” Grantaire says.

“I think we need to.”

“I love you,” Grantaire says. “But you haven't made this okay yet.”

“I'm flying to Japan in a few hours,” Enjolras says. “Cosette is sending a car. But I didn't want to leave without—I came here to apologize. And possibly to fight.”

“Fight over what?”

“You've underestimated me,” Enjolras says.

“ _I've_ underestimated _you_?”

“Yes.” Enjolras stands up, shoves his hands in his pockets. “Everyone keeps telling me I think what you do is worthless. Even you.”

“Don't you?”

“If I only cared about things that I thought would change the world, how could I be in love with you?”

Grantaire thinks that if he weren't sitting down, he'd take a physical step back.

“Wait,” Enjolras says, reaching forward and then thinking better of it. “That's not what I meant—I mean, I did mean it, but not the way it sounded.”

“What the fuck _did_ you mean then?”

“I mean—our relationship isn't, like, going to change the world—but I'm still here, with you.”

“Do you want a cookie?” Grantaire says, and then he stands up, too. “Is that why you've been bothering with—” He waves a hand around aimlessly. “Am I supposed to humanize you? Make you seem like less of a marble statue? That's why you're here?”

“No one even knew,” Enjolras says desperately. “It wasn't—this wasn't about my _image_.”

“I don't mean to the world, I just mean—to you.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says. “No. It's not—”

“Then what _is_ it?” Grantaire says. 

“You misinterpret most of what comes out of my mouth,” Enjolras says. “I can't—I can't fix you. If you want to see the worst in everything I say, then that's a conversation to have with your therapist, not me.”

“It's not my fault you don't know how to fucking communicate.”

“I'm _great_ at communicating.” Less desperate. Annoyed now. Pissed. “It is literally my job.”

“Preaching isn't the same as talking,” Grantaire says. “And starting a cult of teenagers isn't the same as being in a relationship. Sorry if no one ever taught you that.”

They're both quiet for a moment, staring at each other, breathing heavily, and Grantaire thinks there's a moment where Enjolras is going to drop it all, fall to his knees and beg forgiveness or maybe ask if they can just forget all of it, or maybe Grantaire is going to just kiss him, maybe they can ignore this whole thing, brush it over like they have been from day one—but then Enjolras's phone vibrates.

It's Cosette. 

Enjolras reads the text. “My car is here,” he says.

“Great,” Grantaire says.

“So that's it, then?” Enjolras says. “I need to go to JFK right now, and this is how we're leaving it?”

Grantaire stares at him in silence.

“Fine,” Enjolras says. “I'll see you in a week.”

“I'll work on the song,” Grantaire says. “Send you the updated version.”

“Great. I can't wait.”

Enjolras takes his coat and leaves Grantaire standing there, still in his towel, staring at their half-eaten breakfasts, the pounding in his head threatening to overcome him. 

He feels oddly dizzy, suddenly, and he sits down on the couch hard enough to make it squeak in protest. It is silent in his apartment otherwise, and the reality of what has just happened hits Grantaire, and he presses his face against a pillow in an effort to force himself not to hyperventilate.

Next to him, his phone vibrates. He gets a text from Cosette, too, but his is all caps: _WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?_ A link to an article, possibly from one of the people in the bar last night: _Sardonic Colon's Grantaire in Danger?_ Another link: _NOT SO SARDONIC: PUNK FRONTMAN CHECKS HIMSELF INTO MENTAL HOSPITAL_. Another: _Emo is as Emo Does?_

A memory: someone next to him, writing things down as he said them. At the moment, he thought—absurdly, drunkenly—that it was nice, that it'd help him turn his babbles into lyrics. _Why isn't there always a scribe following me around_ , he thought.

His phone starts ringing. 

Grantaire turns it off and flings it at the wall.

*

The flight between JFK and Haneda takes twenty-one and a half hours including a layover in Hong Kong.

Enjolras doesn't like flying, and he especially doesn't like it now, on-edge the whole time, strapped into a seat in first class and heavily medicated, two Xanax chased with a tiny airplane bottle of whiskey (“Really?” Combeferre said when Enjolras requested it. Enjolras ignored him).

He gets up to go to the bathroom ten hours in, stares at himself in the tiny airplane bathroom mirror, looks down at his hands, how they look almost incandescent in the fluorescent lighting. He doesn't know how he never noticed it before, but the blue of the veins in his hands is apparent not only on the undersides of his wrists but on the top of his hands, too, creeping thin blue lines that follow his tendons to the tips of his fingers except for where they are obscured by chewed-down fingernail and the pink-red skin beneath it. 

Someone knocks at the door, and Enjolras splashes water on his face, but it doesn't help the blurriness of his mind. It takes him a moment to remember the alcohol and the Xanax, to realize the slowness in his movements must be coming from that, and someone knocks again, and Enjolras sighs, opens his eyes.

“One second,” he calls, drying himself off.

It's Bahorel on the other side of the door, only half awake. 

“You were in there for, like, half an hour, dude.”

“Was I?” Enjolras says.

“Everything okay?”

“Bathroom's all yours.”

“Enjolras—”

But Enjolras is already finding his way back to his seat, flagging down a flight attendant for another tiny airplane bottle of booze and ignoring the burn as it goes down his throat.

Grantaire is human weakness, the kind Enjolras has been trying to eliminate for years. He is a firm believer in aestheticism and hedonism, and every choice he makes espouses both. He is a cynic, and his relentless pessimism has to be damaging to the cause.

He is a weakness and a distraction. 

If they've broken up, it's probably for the best.

Next to him, Combeferre shifts awake. He wraps his fingers around Enjolras's wrist and squeezes, and Enjolras blinks at the sudden heat in his eyes.

*

In the hours following Enjolras's departure from Grantaire's apartment, Grantaire's thoughts take on a certain patter, two words repeating, _Enjolras left Enjolras left Enjolras left Enjolras left Enjolras left Enjolras left_ —

It's all he can think about. If before he was sure they were over, now he knows it in his heart of hearts; what was a fight that could have been solved by a mutual disregarding of stubbornness now feels bone-shatteringly, mind-numbingly real.

Grantaire doesn't have them often, panic attacks, but he's having one now, and it feels like the weight of the entire world, the world Enjolras has failed to save, is pressing down on his chest and forcing all the air out of his lungs, crushing his ribs, compressing his internal organs. He gasps for breath, but finds it mostly useless, and he curls up on his couch, pressing his forehead to his knees, waiting for it to stop.

He feels so young suddenly, like he's back in high school terrified of getting caught smoking weed, of getting in trouble with his parents, of his parents' disappointed faces as they ransack his bedroom and find everything else—a stash of alcohol, a diary in which he confessed his sexuality and his feelings and a million other things he didn't want anyone to know, the porn on his computer. Except it's worse than that, because then the worst thing that could have happened to him was exposure to a family who, after initial shock, loved him anyway. And now the worst thing that could happen to him has happened, and _he_ made it happen, and that must mean he was right all long—he isn't good enough for Enjolras. He isn't good enough to be selling this many records, to have this many Instagram followers, to have to hide under a hat and sunglasses when he goes outside. Enjolras is right, and Grantaire isn't good at what he does, and all of this has been some sick joke from some sick god or maybe a steady trickle of luck that has at long last run out.

He doesn't know how to fix this. He tries to smoke a bowl, but his hands shake too hard for him to flick his lighter on. He lines up cocaine, but thinks better of it a moment later. He pours himself a drink and tries to throw it back, but most of it ends up splashed on his face or down the front of his chest. He thinks about listening to music—no, all of it is about Enjolras. Thinks about writing music—can't, because all he thinks about is Enjolras. Can't text anyone because he's just destroyed his phone, can't answer any texts for the same reason, can't imagine going to a party because he can't get his fingers to stop shaking for long enough to get dressed. None of his usual methods of distancing himself are working, but he doesn't think it's fair, having to feel this—he'd do anything, he thinks, to block it all out, to shut it down.

In a moment of—unprecedented, he thinks—ingenuity, Grantaire gets the idea to light a pencil from his stove, then use that to light the end of a joint. It works, and the weed has an immediate calming effect. He sits out on his fire escape and notes that, even now, even in January with the snow falling, and even though he's still in nothing but his bath towel, it isn't cold yet. An unseasonably warm winter this year, he thinks, slipping slightly on the ice lining the metal bars that make up the floor of the fire escape.

When he goes back inside, he finds that his apartment is burning hot, and he hides from it all in his bed, closing his eyes and wishing himself away.

*

If they've broken up, it's probably for the best.

And yet.

He thinks of his own lyrics, his words and Jehan's, a corny line about how without love what's the point of a revolution, a line fans scream at the tops of their lungs every show. He thinks about that umbrella, touring the Middle East, that show in Jerusalem, that couple kissing, how it made him miss Grantaire. He wonders about the stakes of it all: the whole world is frighteningly large, he's come to realize over the past year, and to save all of it seems—he doesn't want to admit it, doesn't even want to think it—impossible. 

But to ground it, to ground the revolution in one person, one human being—humanity, for all its weakness, has that singular strength, that combination of relentless dissatisfaction and tendency toward self-destruction that causes it both to crave a revolution and to love; and Enjolras has always loved ( _Dialogue cannot exist in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people_ , Freire said), loved the world and his friends and now loves, to decimating effect, Grantaire. Grantaire _is_ the people, Enjolras thinks: so frighteningly human, so prone to all its pitfalls and the possessor of all its beauties, its potencies—to love Grantaire, Enjolras thinks, is to love humanity, and though he cannot save Grantaire (he is not, after all, Christ), the idea of closing off that love, that strength, is as cataclysmic as the idea of leaving humanity to fend for itself. 

If he's a revolutionary, this is his revolution; if he is a progressive, this is his teleological end in itself; and Enjolras, who plays the most half-hearted show of his life in Tokyo, boards a flight home with only one thought in mind:

It doesn't matter. Grantaire might be a revolution or he might be its destruction, and maybe, months ago, Enjolras would've cared which.

*

Bossuet takes a very hungover (for the fourth day straight) Grantaire aside four mornings after Enjolras leaves for Japan. “Why am I the one getting notes on the collab from your boyfriend?”

“Do you want to do a bump?” Grantaire says, blinking at the brightness outside compared to the dim lighting of the studio. “I feel like shit.”

Every bone in his body aches, and his head has been throbbing for what feels like years. He wants a cigarette, a little tiny bit of blow, a drink, weed, a fucking Adderall, _anything_.

“No,” Bossuet says. “And to be honest, I don't think you should either.”

“It's not really up to you.”

“I'm not joking, Grantaire.”

Grantaire looks at him. Bossuet has been his friend for as long as he can remember. The person who bought Grantaire his first drink (pilfered brandy from Bossuet's parents' liquor cabinet), sat through exams with Grantaire, started a band with Grantaire. And now he's looking at Grantaire like he's looking at a particularly feral animal.

“I'll lighten up,” Grantaire says.

“If you don't, we'll be forced to do an intervention, and take time off, and all that other shit,” Bossuet says. “I mean it, Grantaire. Stop.”

He holds a hand out, and Grantaire sighs and hands him the baggy holding what's left of his cocaine. Bossuet pockets it. 

“What happened?” he says.

“Nothing.”

“Really? You didn't show up three days ago, didn't answer your phone, and you've been almost totally unreachable since. And that just happens to be the same day Enjolras left for Tokyo.” Bossuet looks very unimpressed. “What happened?”

“I don't know,” Grantaire says. “We fought. We might have broken up.”

“You've been fighting a lot lately.”

“Yeah.”

“You know self-medicating is bad, right?”

“I have an appointment with my therapist today and I'm pretty sure she's going to tell me exactly the same thing.”

Bossuet's wariness hasn't completely disappeared yet, but he holds out an arm to Grantaire, traps him in a gruff hug that Grantaire, achey and sore all over, begrudgingly accepts. 

“Let's finish this song,” Bossuet says.

“The collab from hell,” Grantaire says.

“It sounds pretty good now, actually,” Bossuet says. “We ended up using two of the recordings so that you're both on the first verse, and we totally cut that one line that was giving us issues. Enjolras's voice sounds good with yours.”

“I can't wait to hear it,” Grantaire says.

“Maybe you should talk to him.”

“We tried that.”

“Did you actually try it?”

“What?”

“Like, did you try to talk about it? Or did you just jump to your own shitty conclusions like you always do?”

“I don't _always_ do that.”

“Really, dude? Remember when every time a teacher wanted to talk to you in high school you swore you were about to get kicked out of school?”

“That was valid,” Grantaire says. “I kept getting caught smoking weed on school grounds.”

“Or what about when Stars wanted to sign us and you were convinced they were just scammers?”

“To be fair, Cosette Fauchelevent does sound like a fake name.”

“See? You don't listen.” Bossuet raps Grantaire gently on the forehead with his knuckles. “Go fucking—act like an adult human for once. Just _call_ him.”

“He's in Japan.”

“Oh, so they don't have phones in Japan now?”

“I mean, they have phones, I just don't—I'd rather talk to him in person.”

“Then wait 'til he gets back, but don't—Grantaire, I _know_ you. You love him and he loves you, and you just need to talk about it.”

He looks so utterly convinced of this that Grantaire, doubtful though he remains, feels himself relax. _Do you still like me?_ Enjolras had asked that day in Grantaire's hotel room, hands on Grantaire's knees, voice so small Grantaire felt his heart shatter. He wants to ask Enjolras the same thing now. He wants to talk to Enjolras, to say anything to him, and suddenly the desire to hear his voice—it doesn't even have to be _good_ , Grantaire thinks, fuck, he could be calling Grantaire trash and the sound of it would be worth it—overwhelms him.

“Okay,” Grantaire says. “I'll talk to him.”

*

Sank Amy distribute themselves across the United States when they return from Japan, and Enjolras goes back to New York alone this time.

He takes an Uber to Grantaire's apartment, finds that no one is home, and lets himself in with a spare key. No, spare is the wrong word—implies a lack of intent, an extra-ness that isn't there. It's his key. Which Grantaire gave him for exactly this occasion.

Though he's exhausted, he thinks Grantaire wouldn't appreciate the person he's just fought with—the person he was dating, was in love with—is dating? Is in love with?—showing up in his bed after no closure, so instead Enjolras opens his laptop and watches a movie from Grantaire's couch.

It's silent in Grantaire's empty apartment, and as the clock ticks, it becomes more and more difficult for Enjolras to tamp down the effects of physical exhaustion, the combination of the tremors in his hands from too much caffeine with that soreness in the back of his neck from having to support his head for so long. He's so tired he almost wants to cry for it, feels it behind his eyes, that heat, that sting, and pushes the heels of his palms against his face in an effort to stifle the feeling. 

He has never been so exhausted in his life. He knows it's a combination of jet lag, legitimate tiredness, and world-weariness, but it doesn't mean Enjolras particularly wants to give in to it. He knows, _knows_ that if he forces himself to keep going for a few more moments, another hour, another day, he'll see progress—small victories, tiny reforms, spurred on by Sank Amy's tireless preaching, and that's necessary, isn't it, the tirelessness—

“Enjolras?”

Enjolras looks up. He didn't even notice Grantaire opening the door, and he exhales through his teeth now.

“Sorry,” he says. “I don't know if I'm not supposed to be here. I just—I don't want to force my presence on you, but. I came here anyway.” 

“What are you doing here?”

Grantaire looks tired, too, a bag slung over his shoulder, and he's home at eleven which means he hasn't gone out, but he's home at eleven which means he's been working all day. There are dark circles under his eyes and there's an uncharacteristic slump to him, the kind of look Enjolras is pretty sure he hasn't seen Grantaire have since that early in that first tour together in North America.

“I needed,” Enjolras says, and then finds that he can't answer the question. “I'm sorry. I can leave.”

“No,” Grantaire says. “It's late.”

He stares at Enjolras like he's never seen him before, wide dark eyes stricken, exploring every inch of Enjolras's face.

“I'm here because,” Enjolras says, and can't prevent his voice from cracking. “I'm not here to fight or fuck or anything. I'm just here because—I miss you.”

Grantaire sets his bag down carefully, then straightens, runs a hand through his hair, and closes his eyes briefly. Like this, he looks even more tired, less like a man with his eyes closed and more like a hospital patient in an induced coma.

He opens his eyes again.

“You look like shit,” Grantaire says.

“So do you.”

Grantaire rubs one of his eyes, a gesture that makes him look impossibly young. “I'm not—sleeping well,” he admits. “And I'm strictly no cocaine these days. Bossuet's orders.”

“Oh,” Enjolras says. “Good. I mean—about the cocaine, not the. The sleep.”

“I know what you mean.” 

Enjolras forces himself not to say, _I don't think you do_ , but he thinks Grantaire gets it anyway, and then it's there between them, that chasm Enjolras can't step over, desperate as he is to do so. He considers, carefully, his options: to leap over it would require him to accept Grantaire's issues with himself forever, to constantly be on the look out, to pray none of the words that come out of his mouth—which are, admittedly, sometimes poorly chosen; but sometimes Grantaire seems to be hurt by things that are perfectly legitimate, like expressing a preference for something as simple as a song by a band that isn't Sardonic Colon—cause a fight.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says. “I don't want to break up.” 

“Why?” Grantaire says.

“What do you mean, why?” Enjolras says, incredulous. “Because I _love_ you?”

“Why?”

“No,” Enjolras says, and thinks, _fuck it_ , and leaps into the chasm. “We're not doing that. I'm not going to convince you that you're worth loving if you don't already believe it. That isn't fair. I can't be your—I'm not a signifier of worth.”

Grantaire stares back at him. “I know you're not. I don't need—”

“I meant self-worth, Grantaire.”

“I know that. I do! I only want—reassurance. That this isn't just about you—proving something to yourself.”

“I love you,” Enjolras says. “I'd love you even if I didn't care about politics at all. Is that what you want to hear? I love you and it has _nothing_ to do with me, and I want you to stop questioning my _fucking_ taste and believe me.”

“If you could choose, would you love someone else?”

“If I could choose, I wouldn't love anyone, but I can't choose, and I love you, and yes, you make me better, you make me more human, but it's incidental, it isn't the goal, and I'm grateful for it and for you, and I love you, and I need you to—please just listen to me.”

“I love you too,” Grantaire says. “Now what?”

Enjolras gazes at him. “I don't know. I just—I miss you. I thought about you the whole time in Japan. I don't know how to—I don't know how to do this. I just miss you.”

“Come here,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras obeys, doesn't stop walking until he's close enough to Grantaire to feel his breath—unsteady, heavy with cigarette smoke, a fractured thought: _how does he still sound so_ —on his face.

“I miss you too,” Grantaire says, and wraps his arms around Enjolras so tightly that Enjolras stays still for a moment before reciprocating. 

He has never been a hugger. His parents never really did it, and his nanny was more of a hand-holder. Fans always want hugs, and Enjolras will accept because he likes human contact and thinks of it—generally—as a good way to establish connections with people, but he knows he comes off best at arm's length, and he's seen pictures of himself, arms locked around a teenager, looking stiff as an action figure superhero. 

This is different. Grantaire is too close for stiffness other than the exhausted tension present in every sinew of his body, and anyway Enjolras has no reason to feel uncomfortable touching or being touched by Grantaire, and aside from all of that is desperate to have as much of Grantaire's body against his as possible, is starving for Grantaire in a way he hasn't ever been starving for anything before, and so he pulls him as close as he can. Grantaire's bowed head buries itself in Enjolras's shoulder.

“I really missed you,” Grantaire says. “Before Japan. Europe. Everything. Maybe this is too hard.”

“It's not. And if it is—then fuck it.”

“Fuck what?”

“It. Everything.”

“Are you saying—”

“Yes.”

“I don't want you to do that for me,” Grantaire says carefully, lips brushing against the crook of Enjolras's neck. It must be accidental, but Enjolras feels like every one of his nerve endings is on fire. “I wouldn't ask you to do that for me.”

“I know you wouldn't. But if it comes to it—if it's too hard, if we can't manage—then we'll lighten up on touring, or we'll stop, or we'll insist on always touring together, or we'll start a new band with twelve people in it like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and Stars can suck it up because we have a lot of fucking fans.”

Enjolras feels Grantaire's eyelashes flutter against his skin and imagines that his eyes have closed.

“I'm so tired,” Grantaire says, and sounds it, and his arms, locked around Enjolras, shift a little. “I just want to go to bed. Are you tired?”

“Yes.”

“Stay with me,” Grantaire says. “I mean—you haven't booked a room, have you?”

“No.”

“Presumptuous.”

“A little. But I can—”

“No. Stay,” Grantaire says. “Just—just stay.”

Enjolras closes his eyes. “Okay.”

“I'm sorry,” Grantaire says. “I'll—try harder. You were right. You're right.”

“I'm sorry, too,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire lets go at last. “I love you. Let's go to bed.”

Enjolras can't help but smile at him, helplessly, desperately, ridiculously pleased that he's here, that this was the right decision. 

“I love you,” Enjolras says. “I'm tired, too.”

  


** epilogue **

After weeks of tux fittings and rehearsals and interviews and press, crazy amounts of press, “Who are you wearing?” “Uh—Tom Ford, I think?”, “That's hilarious—do you think he knows who Tom Ford is?” (Eponine, watching on a hotel room TV in L.A.), “Absolutely not” (Grantaire, next to her on the bed), they're finally sitting at the Grammys, Sank Amy and Sardonic Colon in the Stars Records section along with a series of producers (both the ones working on Sardonic Colon's current album), Cosette—who is here both as Marius's date and as the newly promoted vice president of the label, Patron-Minette (who are nominated for but do not win Best New Artist), and Javert.

Sardonic Colon are there to perform. Sank Amy are there because they're nominated. 

“We're going to win,” Joly says, like he's part of Sank Amy. “We're going to win and it's going to be fucking awesome, because you guys could definitely not have finished that album without us.”

 _Polis_ the album is nominated for album of the year, and both “Polis” the song and “Secondhand Smoke” are nominated for song _and_ record of the year.

All told, Stars is very happy with them. It's at least part of the reason Cosette was promoted.

They lose record of the year and song of the year, Cosette patting their shoulders, whispering, “It's okay, the other songs were spoilers, we should've fought to only get one in each category, maybe 'Polis' for record and 'Secondhand Smoke' for song—”

“It's okay,” Enjolras says. “It wasn't the point, it was never the point, the point is that we're here, we performed, we got to talk a bit—”

He does a good job of hiding his disappointment, but, Grantaire thinks, remembering him rehearsing bits of his speech (“What we have to fear is not merely fear itself but its _influence_ on us as individuals and as a society—”), he must be disappointed nonetheless.

The awards drag on. Sardonic Colon play, a live debut of a track they released online earlier in the week off _Humpty Dumpty_. (Later, someone will send Grantaire a Vine of Enjolras dancing to the song in his seat, singing along to every word, beaming; Grantaire, who has never seen video of Enjolras watching him perform, will gape at it in shock.) Rihanna does a duet with Macklemore. Grantaire meets her backstage and tries to be cool, but, quite frankly, is not. 

“You didn't embarrass yourself _too_ badly,” Eponine whispers in his ear as they make their way back to their seats while Rihanna completely upstages Macklemore. “Take comfort in that.”

The night ends, as ever, on Album of the Year, an award announced this year by aging rockstars. Enjolras, beside Grantaire, looks completely cool and calm except for the ceaseless tapping of his foot, a habit he has no doubt picked up from Grantaire himself. 

“And the Grammy goes to—Sank Amy, _Polis_!” the aging rockstars say in sync.

Enjolras stands up immediately. Around them, the musicians in the Stars section are all out of their seats, ready to clap their label-mates on the back. The dreadlocked producer Enjolras doesn't like is already making his way toward the stage. Cosette and Marius are hugging, Marius saying something muffled into her shoulder. Combeferre kisses Eponine, then kisses her again, but she has a production credit so she can follow him onto the stage anyway, but they don't stop kissing. Around them, all their friends are beaming and laughing and smiling and clapping and cheering.

Grantaire smiles at Enjolras, reaches up to squeeze his shoulder or pat his elbow or do _something_ that'll seem supportive but not too supportive, affectionate but only in a friendly way, a no-homo bro-hug, something—

Enjolras bends almost in half, cups a hand around the back of Grantaire's neck, and kisses him on the mouth.

Grantaire isn't sure if the screams get louder after that, or if everyone goes quiet. He's dimly aware of Enjolras moving away from him, of Sank Amy and their collaborators making their way to the stage. Now, he thinks, Enjolras is giving a speech and then will eventually pass off the mic to Combeferre with some kind of phrase about white voices and how they shouldn't be the only ones heard (this Grantaire only knows because he remembers Enjolras in that hotel room in L.A. practicing on the off chance that they win something).

All Grantaire knows is that now _everyone_ knows, and everyone knows because Enjolras wants them all to know, and not only is he not a secret anymore but—that's his name being said, that's him being thanked, _and special thanks to the love of my life Grantaire_ , the air has gone completely out of the room, it's like he's drowning but in a good way, and Musichetta is next to him squeezing his hand.

“Congrats,” she whispers into his ear.

_special thanks to the love of my life Grantaire_

He thinks of Enjolras always looking so starved, so hungry for everything he wants to change and fix and revolutionize about the world, and he thinks that he was wrong to want Enjolras to look at him like that. He's not the world Enjolras is trying to change. He's not a problem to be solved, he's not a humanizing ploy, not a muse for his writer's block. He's the love of his life.

Grantaire's heart goes wild in his chest, and when Enjolras sits back down next to him, Grantaire says, not doubting exactly but maybe _questioning_ , “Did you mean that?”

“Every word of it.”

“I wasn't aware you were capable of huge romantic gestures,” Grantaire says.

“I figured it was hypocritical of me to preach freedom and equality and tell everyone to stand up for their rights and beliefs when I wasn't even willing to tell everyone about the person I love,” Enjolras says. “And—” like it's a confession, an admission of guilt—“I thought it might make you happy.”

“Oh,” Grantaire says. “Well—it does.” It's silent for a moment between them, almost awkward, then, “I love you.”

“I know,” Enjolras says. “Let's go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) sorry for the sappy af ending and the tiny macklemore joke but like…...wasn't it earned after the angst???
> 
> 2) this verse is pretty much done-zo unless I come back and write some random coda or something for it. to stay updated on that, follow the series or follow [my fandom blog](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com). If you wanna talk or be my bro follow my fandom or [main blog](http://osaudade.tumblr.com) (but keep in mind that my main blog is pretty vanilla in regards to fic lol)
> 
> 3) thank you so so much to everyone who has read and left kudos and especially commented on this series!! you have made writing it so much more fun even/especially when I thought I would never finish it sometime around the second interlude. you are all incredible and I love you and want to be your friend <3 
> 
> 4) who has some good bandom recs? who used to read/write bandom? I used to be snugglebud_x3 on livejournal were we friends? did I comment an and-hearts-semicolon on your porn? did you believe in and/or fully subscribe to various conspiracy theories, such as summer of like/infinity on high being about mikey way, william beckett's possibly fake baby (the Original BabyGateTM), audrey kitching as a fake gf (the Original Fake GfTM), waycest, and cultverse? did you believe in your heart of hearts that gabe saporta was creepy as fuck? do you feel bad knowing you supported those band dudes even though a bunch of them were preying on underage fans? yeah me too. at least fictional characters (like vampires) will never hurt you.


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